Chapter Ten.
The Black Mamba.
We were talking about snakes at the little roadside winkle—a composite shop, where you could buy moist black sugar, tinned butter, imported; tinned milk, also imported; cotton, prints, boots, “square face,” tobacco, dates, nails, gunpowder, cans, ribbons, tallow candles, and the “Family Herald.” We always did talk about snakes when other topics failed, and no one had been fishing for some time, and the big pumpkin season had passed.
“Man,” said Lanky John, the ostrich farmer, “I killed a snake, a ringhals, yesterday morning back of the kraal, and in the evening when I went by there was a live ringhals coiled round the dead one.”
“There’s a lot of love among snakes,” said Abe Pike, who had swapped a bush-buck hide for a pound of coffee and a roll of tobacco. “They don’t talk much, but they think a lot, and you can’t plumb the feelings of silent folk; they’re that deep.”
“Ever been in love, Uncle?” asked Lanky John, popping a big lump of black sugar into his mouth.
“I guess it won’t take more’n a foot measure to get to the bottom of your feelings, tho’ you are long enough to be a telegraft pole,” snorted Uncle Abe.
“Snakes haven’t got any brain,” said Lanky John, after an awkward pause.
“No more has a whip-stick,” said the old man, with a contemptuous glance at Lanky’s long, thin limbs.
“That’s true,” replied John, with a wink at us; “though I’ve heard of a snake that glued on to a whip-stick all for love of you, Uncle.”
“Snakes,” said Abe, “knows when to speak and when to keep shut, which is more than some folk can do. If you come unexpected on a snake in a path, and he sees your foot coming down on him, he lets you know he’s about, and that foot of yours is jest fixed in the air. Well, suppose that snake is not in the path, but jest stretched out ’longside, he don’t call out. For why? ’Cos he knows it’s safer for him and for you that he should keep quiet. I tell you there’s not a man here who hasn’t time and again passed in the dark within a few inches of a snake.”
A listener, who was seated in a dark corner, moved out into the sunshine.
“Did I ever tell you that yarn about the black mamba?”
“You never did, old man, so shove along.”
“You may thank your stars there’s no mambas down in this country, for of all critturs that crawl, or fly, or walk, there’s not one for nateral cussedness and steady hate to come up to a black mamba. Why! thunder! if there was a mamba in these parts, and he’d a grudge against me, I’d move off a hundred miles to where my sister ’Liza lives.”
“A hundred miles! That’s a good step.”
“Maybe it wouldn’t be fur enough neither. You wait! Ten years ago I was riding goods to the Diamond Fields, and after one trip I was starting back with the empty wagon, there being no produce to load up with, when a chap came up and offered three guineas for his passage. Well, a man’s wagon is his home, and you don’t want to give a fellow the run of your tent for a month without knowing something about him. So I jes’ looked him all over—saw that his boots were worn out, and that he kep’ looking over his shoulder, when he climbed into the wagon and drew the blanket over him—though the sun was fierce enough to light your pipe. He gave me sich a look when he went in that I had not the heart to drag him out, and off I trekked. He didn’t join me at the fire that night, and when I climbed in, thinking he was asleep, he was shiverin’ as though he had the ague. Well, I gave him a glass of Cango and went to sleep. At sunrise I trekked again, and bymby I see him draw the canvas aside and look back over the veld, which was as flat as the palm of my hand. Thinks I, he’s expecting the police, but I let him be, and at dinner he came out, looking as skeered as a monkey with a candle. First he took a walk round the wagon, then he shaded his eyes as he glanced over the veld, then he took a bite and a look, then a sip and a look.
“‘What are you looking for?’ says I.
“He let the beaker fall out of his hands and turned white.
“‘Have you seen it?’ he whispered, with a sort of choke.
“‘Seen what?’ I said.
“‘I don’t feel well,’ he answered, with a twitch for a smile, and climbed back into the wagon.
“I tell you his looks made me feel queer, and I slept that night under the wagon. Well, I made a long skoff the next day, crossed the Modder River, and no sooner’d we get across than the river came down with a rush, brimming full with a boiling yeller flood right up to the lip of the steep banks. That coon spent the whole day on the bank watching the other side, and fixing his eyes on every tree and branch that went sailing down.
“‘It’s a grand flood,’ he said, rubbing his hands together; ‘’twould sweep a whale away like a piece of straw.’
“‘Yes, and a policeman too, eh?’ said I, looking at him hard.
“He noticed the meaning in my words, and a human smile broke over his face, chasing away the worried look that seemed carved into it. ‘Policeman,’ he said. ‘I’ve no cause to fear a policeman, or any man. Good God!’ he cried, catching me by the arm, ‘what’s that?’
“‘Where?’ said I, fit to jump out of my skin for the terror in his face.
“He stood there with his eyes glaring at the water, and a shaking finger pointing into the very heart of the yeller flood. There stood out the root of a tree, and clinging to the root the coils of a snake, with his gleaming head moving like a branch. Jest a moment it showed, then the water swirled over it again.
“‘Let go of my arm,’ I said, for his fingers were biting into me, and the look of him made me afeard, so that I talked gruffly.
“‘Did you see it?’ he said, and then he jest collapsed like a bundle of clothes. I had a good mind to leave him there, but, instead, I histed him on to my shoulders, and poured enough Cango into him to make him forget his name. He wasn’t fit to stand until a couple of days after, and then wha’ jer think he did? Cut up his clothes into shreds and laughed fit to kill himself when I found him at it. Of course, I thought he was clean daft, but he weren’t, and for the first time, with my old corduroys on him, he sat by the camp fire, sipping his coffee, and talking—talking mainly about snakes and bloodhounds, and things that made my backbone whang like a broken fiddle-string. He frightened himself, too, so that when he saw the long achter-oss sjambok quivering on the ground where the driver had thrown it, his jaw got rigid, and moved up and down without any words coming from his mouth. Then, with a sort of sob, he snatched up the axe, and I’m blowed if he didn’t cut that sjambok into a thousand bits. It was a good sjambok, too, made of rhinoceros hide, as thick as your wrist at the butt and going off to a point, and when I told the idiot what he’d done, he jes’ went off into another unnateral fit of wild laughter, after which he paid me a guinea and went to bed. Putting this, that, and the other together, with the Cango brandy, I guessed my man had got snakes in his head, and I kept the demijohn under lock. That calmed him down, and he was all right until we came to the Orange River, where we had to camp while the water went down. About fifty wagons were there waiting to cross, and there was quite a stir with all the fellows moving about visiting. When we had outspanned, I joined a group to hear about the state of the roads, the condition of the veld for grazing, and all them things that transport riders talk about, when one chap asked if I had heard the news. ‘What news?’ says I. ‘About that snake,’ says he; ‘he was seen at the Riet River drift last week.’ ‘Yes,’ says another, ‘and two days before he was at Aliwal North.’ ‘I heard from the mail coach driver,’ says a third, ‘that the snake overtook his coach, stopped the horses, and took a steady look at all the passengers, after which he went across the veld, leaving ’em all frozen with terror. It was twenty feet long, and its eyes were like black diamonds.’
“Of course, I wasn’t swallering that, but when I told my traveller the sweat gathered in big drops on his forehead, and the old hunted look came into his face. ‘You don’t believe this silly yarn?’ says I, placing my hand on his shoulder. ‘Believe it, man!’ he said. ‘Good heavens! that snake is after me.’ ‘After you,’ says I. ‘Yes,’ says he, making an effort to swallow something. ‘It has chased me up and down over a thousand miles for two months.’ ‘Nonsense!’ I said; ‘you’re nervous and fanciful.’ ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Two months ago I was hunting in the Zulu country, and one day, ten miles away from my camp, I shot a mamba. I took the body back with me to skin it; but when the two blacks I had with me saw it, they cried out to me to take it away, or the mamba’s mate would come in the night. I left them sleeping by the fire, and the next morning they were still sleeping—ay, they were sleeping the last sleep, for the mamba had been in the night.’
“As I looked at them, with the blood in me like water, I heard a heavy breathing, and saw my horse on the ground, his eyes glazed and his nostrils fighting for breath, while, resting on his body, was the awful head of a mamba, his eyes fixed on mine, and his forked tongue darting in and out. I fired at him with the rifle barrel, but clean missed in my flurry; then I ran until my courage came back. I found that I had left the powder behind, and slowly turned back. I had not gone a hundred paces when I met him on my track, slipping like a black streak through the grass, and I thought of nothing then but escape. After a time I met a party of Zulus, but when I asked for their assistance, they fled with loud cries of alarm, and at a Zulu kraal, where I stopped to ask for thick milk, they drove me out when they learnt why it was I fled. That night as I slept that snake coiled by my side.
“‘What!’
“‘Yes; he could have struck me then, but he preferred to have full vengeance. I woke at the flicker of his tongue on my cheek, thinking it was a fly—a fly! good Lord! and my hand fell upon his cold, sinewy folds, and his head was resting on my shoulder. Ever since he has been after me, with a deadly hate that is slowly driving me mad. Sometimes he disappears, but I never escape from the glint of his unwinking eyes, and one day he will strike, unless—unless—’
“‘Well?’ said I, looking at his drawn face.
“‘Unless,’ he said, ‘I forestall him.’
“‘No my lad,’ said I, ‘for that would be a sin, and when you are stronger this dream of yours will go.’
“He looked so fallen in, so weak, all of a sudden, that I took him for a walk to the river, and the rush of the waters seemed to comfort him. He sat on a big boulder looking across, and the whiteness presently went from his cheeks.
“‘I’ve got an idea,’ he said, ‘if I could reach the other side I’d be all right again.’
“We sat there in a sort of a dream for an hour or two, when I happened to look round, and right there on the flat of the ground was stretched out the biggest and the ugliest snake I ever saw, black as night, with a great vicious diamond-shaped head, and a pair of eyes that glowed all colours. He looked as if he’d travelled; his scales, instead of being glossy, were dull with scratches here and there, and his skin had a sort of bagginess as if he hadn’t eaten for weeks. As soon as he saw me turn he raised his head about five feet from the ground, and from his eyes there shot a look that jest kept me fixed like a stone. Then that poor young feller on the stone began to speak again, in a soft way, of the river and its journey to the sea.
“‘I wish,’ he said, ‘I could look on the sea again.’ Then I heard him move, and I knew he was looking into the eyes of his enemy, for that snake began to sway his head to and fro, to and fro, while his tail went twisting in and out, sending his body nearer and nearer. Suddenly there was a shriek, and a splash, and the snake went by me—streamed over the rock into the water, and when I leapt to my feet with a yell that startled the whole camp, I saw an arm thrust above the yeller flood, and above the arm the bend of that black snake, his head turned down looking into the water, and a coil of his body round the elbow. Ole Abe Pike has swound away once, and that was the time. Yes; there was his black body gleaming with the water on it, and his head turned towards the face of the enemy—that poor young chap he had follered over three countries for one thousand miles—one thousand English miles.”
“That a true story, Uncle Abe?”
“Ain’t I told it? That’s why I gave up transport riding. I darsn’t go near that Orange River again.”