His servant, an old sergeant of dragoons, has told me that he has seen him stop with his face six inches from the head of a hooded cobra, and stand watching it through his eye-glass as it crawled away from him, knowing that one touch of its fangs would mean death from which there could be no possible escape.

That any reasoning being should be inspired with terror--sickening, deadly terror--by such pitifully harmless things, seemed to him monstrous; and he determined to try and cure her of her fear of them.
"He succeeded in doing this eventually somewhat more thoroughly than he had anticipated, but it left a terror in his own eyes that has not gone out of them to this day, and that never will.
"One evening, riding home through a part of the jungle not far from his bungalow, he heard a soft, low hiss close to his ear, and, looking up, saw a python swing itself from the branch of a tree and make off through the long grass.

He had been out antelope-shooting, and his loaded rifle hung by his stirrup.

Springing from the frightened horse, he was just in time to get a shot at the creature before it disappeared.

He had hardly expected, under the circumstances, to even hit it.