Shukin froze, mouth open and revolver in hand.
The conservatory was a terrible writhing mass.
Huge snakes slithered across the floor, twisting and intertwining, hissing and uncoiling, swinging and shaking their heads.
The broken shells on the floor crunched under their bodies.
Overhead a powerful electric lamp shone palely, casting an eery cinematographic light over the inside of the conservatory.
On the floor lay three huge photographic-like chambers, two of which were dark and had been pushed aside, but a small deep-red patch of light glowed in the third.
Snakes of all sizes were crawling over the cables, coiling round the frames and climbing through the holes in the roof.
From the electric lamp itself hung a jet-black spotted snake several yards long, its head swinging like a pendulum.
There was an occasional rattle amid the hissing, and a strange putrid pond-like smell wafted out of the conservatory.
The agents could just make out piles of white eggs in the dusty corners, an enormous long-legged bird lying motionless by the chambers and the body of a man in grey by the door, with a rifle next to him.
"Get back!" shouted Shukin and began to retreat, pushing Polaitis with his left hand and raising his revolver with his right.
He managed to fire nine hissing shots which cast flashes of green lightning all round.
The noise swelled terribly as in response to Shukin's shots the whole conservatory was galvanised into frantic motion, and flat heads appeared in all the holes.
Peals of thunder began to roll over the farm and echo on the walls.
"Rat-tat-tat-tat," Polaitis fired, retreating backwards.
There was a strange four-footed shuffling behind him. Polaitis suddenly gave an awful cry and fell to the ground.
A brownish-green creature on bandy legs, with a huge pointed head and a cristate tail, like an enormous lizard, had slithered out from behind the barn, given Polaitis a vicious bite in the leg, and knocked him over.
"Help!" shouted Polaitis. His left arm was immediately snapped up and crunched by a pair of jaws, while his right, which he tried in vain to lift, trailed the machine-gun over the ground.
Shukin turned round in confusion.
He managed to fire once, but the shot went wide, because he was afraid of hitting his companion.
The second time he fired in the direction of the conservatory, because amid the smaller snake-heads a huge olive one on an enormous body had reared up and was slithering straight towards him.
The shot killed the giant snake, and Shukin hopped and skipped round Polaitis, already half-dead in the crocodile's jaws, trying to find the right spot to shoot the terrible monster without hitting the agent.
In the end he succeeded.
The electric revolver fired twice, lighting up everything around with a greenish flash, and the crocodile shuddered and stretched out rigid, letting go of Polaitis.
Blood gushed out of his sleeve and mouth. He collapsed onto his sound right arm, dragging his broken left leg.
He was sinking fast.
"Get out... Shukin," he sobbed.
Shukin fired a few more shots in the direction of the conservatory, smashing several panes of glass.
But behind him a huge olive-coloured coil sprang out of a cellar window, slithered over the yard, covering it entirely with its ten-yard-long body and wound itself round Shukin's legs in a flash.
It dashed him to the ground, and the shiny revolver bounced away.
Shukin screamed with all his might, then choked, as the coils enfolded all of him except his head.
Another coil swung round his head, ripping off the scalp, and the skull cracked.
No more shots were heard in the farm.
Everything was drowned by the all-pervading hissing.
In reply to the hissing the wind wafted distant howls from Kontsovka, only now it was hard to say who was howling, dogs or people.
CHAPTER X.
Catastrophe
In the editorial office of Izvestia the lights were shining brightly, and the fat duty editor was laying out the second " column with telegrams
"Around the Union Republics".
One galley caught his eye. He looked at it through his pince-nez; and laughed, then called the proof-readers and the maker-up and showed them it.
On the narrow strip of damp paper they read:
"Grachevka, Smolensk Province.
A hen that is as big as a horse and kicks like a horse has appeared in the district.
It has bourgeois lady's feathers instead of a tail."
The compositors laughed themselves silly.
"In my day," said the duty editor, chuckling richly, "when I was working for Vanya Sytin on The Russian Word they used to see elephants when they got sozzled.
That's right.
Now it's ostriches."
The compositors laughed.
"Yes, of course, it's an ostrich," said the maker-up. "Shall we put it in, Ivan Vonifatievich?"