“Mem-Sahib?” came the reply from the lamp-room near by, and the man approached.

“That stupid butler has dropped a lamp and run away.  Bring a pail of water quickly and call to the malli[3] to bring a pail of earth as you get it.  Hasten!—­and there is baksheesh,” said Mrs. de Warrenne quietly in the vernacular.

Tap and pail were by the door of the back verandah.  In a minute the hamal entered and flung a pail of water on the burning pool of oil, reducing the mass of blue lambent flames considerably.

“Now hamal,” said the fainting woman, the more immediate danger confronted, “bring another lamp very quickly and put it on the shelf.  Quick! don’t stop to fill or to clean it.”

Was the pricking, shooting pain the repeated stabbing of the snake’s fangs or was it “pins and needles”?  Was this deadly faintness death indeed, or was it only weakness?

In what seemed but a few more years the man reappeared carrying a lighted lamp, the which he placed upon a shelf.

“Listen,” said Mrs. de Warrenne, “and have no fear, brave Bhil.  I have caught a snake.  Get a knife quickly and cut off its head while I hold it.”

The man glancing up, appeared to suppose that his mistress held the snake on the shelf, hurried away, and rushed back with the cook’s big kitchen-knife gripped dagger-wise in his right hand.

“Do you see the snake?” she managed to whisper.  “Under my foot!  Quick!  It is moving ... moving ... moving out.”

With a wild Bhil cry the man flung himself down upon his hereditary dread foe and slashed with the knife.

Mrs. de Warrenne heard it scratch along the floor, grate on a nail, and crush through the snake.

“Are!!  Dead, Mem-Sahib!!  Dead!!  See, I have cut off its head!  Are!!!!  Wah!!  The brave mistress!——­”

As she collapsed, Mrs. de Warrenne saw the twitching body of a large cobra with its head severed close to its neck.  Its head had just protruded from under her foot and she had saved the unborn life for which she had fought so bravely by just keeping still....  She had won her brief decoration with the Cross by—­keeping still. (Her husband had won his permanent right to it by extreme activity.) ...  Had she moved she would have been struck instantly, for the reptile was, by her, uninjured, merely nipped between instep and floor.

Having realized this, Lenore de Warrenne fainted and then passed from fit to fit, and her child—­a boy—­was born that night.  Hundreds of times during the next few days the same terrible cry rang from the sick-room through the hushed bungalow:  “It is under my foot!  It is moving ... moving ... moving ... out!”

* * * * *

“If I had to make a prophecy concerning this young fella,” observed the broken-hearted Major John Decies, I.M.S., Civil Surgeon of Bimariabad, as he watched old Nurse Beaton performing the baby’s elaborate ablutions and toilet, “I should say that he will not grow up fond of snakes—­not if there is anything in the ’pre-natal influence’ theory.”