“Oh, Pat, you fool!” she exclaimed, almost beside herself.  “I tell you that is no shadow!  It’s a snake!  Do you hear?  It’s a huge python!  And it was a snake I trod on just now.  And they are everywhere—­everywhere!  The whole place is rustling with them.  They are closing in on us.  I can hear them!  I can feel them!  I can smell them!  Pat, what shall we do?  Quick, quick!  Think of something!  See now!  It’s moving—­uncoiling!  Look, look!  Did you ever see anything so horrible?  Pat!”

Her voice ended in a breathless shriek.  She suddenly collapsed against him, her face hidden on his breast.  And Hone, stooping impulsively, caught her up in his arms.

“We’ll get out of it somehow,” he said.  “Never fear!”

But even his eyes had widened with a certain horror, for the blot in the moonlight was beyond question moving, elongating, quivering, subtly changing under his gaze.

He held his companion pressed tightly to his heart.  She made no further attempt to urge him.  Only by the tense clinging of her arms about his neck did he know that she was conscious.

Again he heard that vague rustling which he had set down to a sudden draught overhead.  It seemed to come from all directions.

“Ye gods!” he muttered softly to himself.  And again, more softly, “Ye gods!”

To the woman in his arms he uttered no word whatever.  He only pressed the slender figure ever closer, while the blood surged and sang tumultuously in his veins.  Though he stood in the midst of mortal danger, he was conscious of an exultation so mad as to be almost delirious.  She was his—­his—­his!

Something stirred in the undergrowth close to him, and in a moment his attention was diverted from the slow-moving monster ahead of him.  He became aware of a dark object, but vaguely discernible, that swayed to and fro about three feet from the ground seeming to menace him.

The moment he saw this thing, his brain flashed into sudden illumination.  The shrewdness of the hunted creature entered into him.  Without panic, he became most vividly, most intensely alive to the ghastly danger that threatened him.  He stopped to ascertain nothing further.  Swift as a lightning flash he acted—­leapt backwards, leapt sideways, landed upon something that squirmed and thrashed hideously, nearly overthrowing him; and the next moment was breaking madly through the undergrowth, regardless of direction, running blindly through the jungle, fighting furiously every obstacle—­forcing by sheer giant strength a way for himself and for the woman he carried through the opposing tangle of vegetation.

Branches slapped him in the face as he went, clutched at him, tore him, but could not stay his progress.  Many times he stumbled, many times he recovered himself, dashing wildly on and still on like a man possessed.  A marvellous strength was his.  Titan-like, he accomplished that which to any ordinary man would have been an utter impossibility.  Save that he was in perfect condition, even he must have failed.  But that fact was his salvation, that and the fierce passion that urged him, endowing him with an endurance more than human.