A rug lay at one side of the tent, and from under it he took a goatskin sack.  He placed it on the ground in the middle of the circle formed by the seats and crouched down on his haunches.  Margaret shuddered, for the uneven surface of the sack moved strangely.  He opened the mouth of it.  The woman in the corner listlessly droned away on the drum, and occasionally uttered a barbaric cry.  With a leer and a flash of his bright teeth, the Arab thrust his hand into the sack and rummaged as a man would rummage in a sack of corn.  He drew out a long, writhing snake.  He placed it on the ground and for a moment waited, then he passed his hand over it:  it became immediately as rigid as a bar of iron.  Except that the eyes, the cruel eyes, were open still, there might have been no life in it.

‘Look,’ said Haddo.  ‘That is the miracle which Moses did before Pharaoh.’

Then the Arab took a reed instrument, not unlike the pipe which Pan in the hills of Greece played to the dryads, and he piped a weird, monotonous tune.  The stiffness broke away from the snake suddenly, and it lifted its head and raised its long body till it stood almost on the tip of its tail, and it swayed slowly to and fro.

Oliver Haddo seemed extraordinarily fascinated.  He leaned forward with eager face, and his unnatural eyes were fixed on the charmer with an indescribable expression.  Margaret drew back in terror.

‘You need not be frightened,’ said Arthur.  ’These people only work with animals whose fangs have been extracted.’

Oliver Haddo looked at him before answering.  He seemed to consider each time what sort of man this was to whom he spoke.

’A man is only a snake-charmer because, without recourse to medicine, he is proof against the fangs of the most venomous serpents.’

‘Do you think so?’ said Arthur.

’I saw the most noted charmer of Madras die two hours after he had been bitten by a cobra,’ said Haddo.  I had heard many tales of his prowess, and one evening asked a friend to take me to him.  He was out when we arrived, but we waited, and presently, accompanied by some friends, he came.  We told him what we wanted.  He had been at a marriage-feast and was drunk.  But he sent for his snakes, and forthwith showed us marvels which this man has never heard of.  At last he took a great cobra from his sack and began to handle it.  Suddenly it darted at his chin and bit him.  It made two marks like pin-points.  The juggler started back.

’"I am a dead man,” he said.

’Those about him would have killed the cobra, but he prevented them.

’"Let the creature live,” he said.  “It may be of service to others of my trade.  To me it can be of no other use.  Nothing can save me.”

’His friends and the jugglers, his fellows, gathered round him and placed him in a chair.  In two hours he was dead.  In his drunkenness he had forgotten a portion of the spell which protected him, and so he died.’