Stay a while, Leonard!" He sank back exhausted, and at that moment a gust of wind, fiercer than any which had gone before, leapt down the mountain gorges, howling with all the voices of the storm.

It caught the frail hut and shook it.

A cobra hidden in the thick thatch awoke from its lethargy and fell with a soft thud to the floor not a foot from the face of the dying man--then erected itself and hissed aloud with flickering tongue and head swollen by rage.

Leonard started back and seized a crowbar which stood near, but before he could strike, the reptile sank down and, drawing its shining shape across his brother's forehead, once more vanished into the thatch.
His eyes did not so much as close, though Leonard saw a momentary reflection of the bright scales in the dilated pupils and shivered at this added terror, shivered as though his own flesh had shrunk beneath the touch of those deadly coils.

It was horrible that the snake should creep across his brother's face, it was still more horrible that his brother, yet living, should not understand the horror.