Ere he could use the match his heart was momentarily chilled by the most blood-curdling scream he had ever heard.

It appeared to come from the drawing-room.
(Colonel de Warrenne never lit the cheroot that he had put to his lips--nor ever another again.) Springing to the door, one of a dozen that opened into the verandah, he saw his son struggling on the ground, racked by convulsive spasms, with glazed, sightless eyes and foaming mouth, from which issued appalling, blood-curdling shrieks.
Just above him, on the fat satin cushion in the middle of a low settee, a huge half-coiled cobra swayed from side to side in the Dance of Death.
"_It's under my foot--it's moving--moving--moving out_," shrieked the child.
Colonel de Warrenne attended to the snake first.

He half-drew his sword and then slammed it back into the scabbard.

No--his sword was not for snakes, whatever his son might be.

On the wall was a trophy of Afghan weapons, one of which was a sword that had played a prominent part on the occasion of the Colonel's winning of the Victoria Cross.
Striding to the wall he tore the sword down, drew it and, with raised arm, sprang towards the cobra.