THE KING COBRA. 
39 
nowhere in particular ; this creature’s met mine with a 
truculent stare like nothing I had seen before. I did 
not like it, so I took careful aim and lodged a charge of 
small shot into the brute’s neck, six inches behind his head. 
He started, and motion began among the coils. By degrees 
his hold upon the branches relaxed, and after a long time 
he fell, or rather slid, with a heavy thud to the ground. A 
buzz, as of bees, ran through the crowd, with earnest shouts 
of warning meant for me, and now I understood. 
The great brute writhing on the ground was not a python, 
but a Hamadryad, or King Cobra, a venomous snake and 
the most terrible of the whole serpent tribe. The koonbees 
had known this all the time, and hence their terror, for the 
King Cobra does not strike in self-defence only, like other 
snakes, but attacks man and pursues him with terrible fury. 
On this side of India, happily, it is rare, and I had got 
a prize, for this specimen was 12 feet 6 inches in length 
and must have cast its skin quite recently, so bright and 
fresh were the bands of yellow scales across its glossy 
brown back. It was past mischief now, for the charge 
of small shot had severed the spinal cord and interrupted 
all communication with head-quarters, so, though all parts 
of it moved, there was no concert in the motion. It neither 
