“I swung round to shout a warning to Captain Strong. If there was one there were probably others of these deadly guardians of the divine image. There were. To my horror, I saw another snake uncoil itself from a crevice in the doorway, on a level with his neck, and draw its head back in the poise for the fatal dart. I don’t know whether he heard my inarticulate cry. His perception of the danger was simultaneous with mine. But he made no blundering movement of confusion. Swift as lightning his hand shot out and grasped the snake firmly close under the head, where its fangs could not touch him. Then with a quick jerk he flung it into the courtyard. The snake writhed away in a flash. “Such a display of cool, swift courage I have never seen before or since. I ran out to him where he stood in the courtyard gazing after the vanished snake, and excitedly expressed my admiration. He turned round on me with a grim smile and shrugged his shoulders. The wretched priest, if priest he was, had approached and he smiled also, a foolish, exasperating, inscrutable smile, like an idiot enjoying an imbecile esoteric meaning which is a meaning for him alone. Yet at the same time I thought there was a suggestion of sly menace in that cringing grin. “‘Come back into Saigon,’ said Captain Strong, ignoring him. ‘We’ll have a drink before we go on board.’ There was nothing in his manner to remind you that he had just escaped death by a fraction. “I was not at all sorry to quit this unpleasant place, and I descended that rough path with considerably more alacrity than I had mounted it. Captain Strong was as coolly self-possessed as though walking down the main street of San Francisco. “‘I must congratulate you on your luck, sir,’ I ventured, when we had gone a little distance. ‘Had that snake struck a second before----’ “‘Bah!’ he replied, shrugging his shoulders. ‘One can get tired of luck!’ “There was a violence, a sombre bitterness, in his tone which impressed me. I thought of all the miraculous good-fortune which men attributed to him--a specimen of which I had just seen--and wondered whether he were really wearied of it. I could conceive it possible that a man of his type would find life very dull if assured beforehand of success and safety. It would be the struggle, the peril, which would appeal to him. “He relapsed into a gloomy silence which I did not dare to break.