His first act was to possess himself of the weapon, then self-preservation moved him to go back to the other, and get possession of his. The said other lay stupidly, still half-stunned, but he had dropped his knife in the fall. This, too, Wyvern picked up, and now, feeling equal to the pair of them, he went back to where the man and the snake were still struggling.
And a ghastly and horrible scene met his eyes. The man, who seemed to have gone completely mad, was plucking and tearing at the snake, uttering the most hideous howls, and literally foaming at the mouth, as he strove to free himself from those terrible coils. He must have been bitten again and again, as now with his hands within the reptile’s very mouth he strove to tear its head asunder. The struggle had brought him to the brink of a much deeper part of the donga, and now, as Wyvern looked, puzzled what to do next, seemed to be weakening or to lose his balance. He swayed, then toppled heavily through the bushes, and man and snake went crashing down the well-nigh perpendicular bank.
His own peril thus removed, Wyvern’s blood curdled within him at the horror he had witnessed. He went to the place and looked over, but could see nothing. It was too much overhung with bushes—and save for where these had been displaced by a heavy body crashing through, there was no sign or trace of life; no sound either. Probably with all that venom in his system the wretched Kafir was already in the state of coma which should precede death. For him there was no chance, absolutely none. Wyvern went back to where he had left the other.
“Now, Sixpence,” he said, speaking in the taal, which in the Cape Colony is the usual means of communication between white men and natives, “stand up, and put your hands behind you. I’m going to tie them.”
But the fellow begged and prayed that he might be spared this. He would not try to run away, he protested. Where was the use, since his wife and children were at the huts, and besides, was he not well known? Farther he felt very ill, and hardly able to walk as it was, from the effects of the terrible blow the Baas had given him. Perhaps, too, on the strength of that the Baas might bring himself to forgive him. He would serve him so faithfully after that—and the Baas could take twice the value of the sheep out of his wages. Surely the Baas might bring himself to forgive him.
Wyvern, contemplating him, thought he might even be fool enough to do that; and as he put back into his pocket the lanyard of reimpje wherewith he had intended to tie the fellow’s hands, he feared that he might.
“I don’t know about that, Sixpence,” he said. “You have been a pretty schelm sort of a boy, you know. Besides, you would have killed me, you and that other. Who is he, by the way?”
“One of Baas Ferreira’s boys, Baas,” naming a Dutchman whose farm adjoined the river on the other side.
“Well, and which of you was it that planned this slaag?”
The Kafir shrugged his shoulders.