It was a signal to the snakes which all understood. The big snake that had been around Adil’s neck loosened itself and fell with a flop to the hard ground. The others began to dart about in all directions. The medicine man, bewildered, made a dash for cover. But here his haste was unlucky for him. It chanced that he trod squarely upon the body of the big snake. Probably, now that the music had ceased, the snake was no longer under the man’s control--or it may simply have been frightened. However that may have been, it uttered an angry hiss, flung back its head and arched neck, and like a stroke of lightning, buried its poison fangs twice in the bare leg of the fakir. With a screech of agony, he flung up his long, skinny arms, ran around stumblingly in circles, still screaming, and at last fell in a heap in the middle of the clearing. As he did so, something that he had been tightly holding in his right hand from the beginning fell to the ground and rolled in the direction of Nick Carter. CHAPTER VI. A RUNNING SKIRMISH. “What’s that?” involuntarily exclaimed Nick, as he tried to make out the nature of the object. “Looks like a stale doughnut,” offered Patsy Garvan. “But the old guy who dropped it is all in just the same.” “Adil!” called out Jefferson Arnold. “Hush!” warned Nick Carter. “Keep quiet till we see.” “I do see,” insisted the impetuous millionaire. “That’s Adil, and I----” “I’ll save him,” interrupted Nick. “But we’ve got to wait till we see what is behind those trees.” Jefferson Arnold recognized the justice of this, and restrained himself from dashing out into the open, as he would have liked to do. Adil seemed to have been released from his hypnotic trance by the jar of the rifle report. He stood still and looked about him with a light of intelligence in his eyes that had not been there before. For a minute he seemed uncertain which way to go. Then, with a half-uttered ejaculation, he sprang over the body of the medicine man and the snake, and raced in the direction of the tree behind which Chick was still crouching. The report of the rifle, and perhaps its flash, was the guide to the young East Indian, who, such a short time before, had been helpless, with the venomous snake twined about his neck. As he dashed across the clearing, he stooped and picked up something about halfway. It was the object that had fallen from the dead snake charmer’s fingers, and which Patsy had said looked like a stale doughnut. Holding this thing, whatever it was, tightly in his hand, the fugitive kept on till he reached the edge of the open space. “Come on, Adil!” shouted Jefferson Arnold, regardless of everything except the fact that the young man was running to him. “This way, my boy!” Adil stumbled as he got to the shelter of the trees. Then, with a gasp he fell into Arnold’s arms, in a dead faint.