“Absurd! Vipers have poisonous fangs—two.”
“What, in their tails, sir?”
“No, man, in the roof of the mouth. I’ll show you.”
“But do you mean as that chap would ha’ bit us and stung us, sir?” said Wriggs anxiously.
“Of course I do, and you’ve had a very close shave. How did you kill it?”
“Well, sir, he wouldn’t let us kill him, but kep’ on wrigglin’ arter Billy here had trod on his tail, and we didn’t want to quite scrunch him, because you’re so partickler. He got a bit quiet, though, arter a time, and then Billy nipped him at the back o’ the head and put him in his pocket.”
“Look here, when you find a snake with a diamond-shaped head like that, you may be pretty certain that it is venomous.”
The two sailors scratched their heads in unison while Oliver turned the little viper’s head over, opened its mouth, and made it gape widely by placing a little bone stiletto which he used in skinning the smaller birds within, and then with the point of a penknife he raised two tiny fangs which were laid back on the roof of the reptile’s mouth, and which, when erect, looked like points of glass.
“There!” he exclaimed, “those are the poison fangs. They’re hollow and connected with a couple of exceedingly small glands or bags of poison, which shoot a couple of tiny drops of venom through the hollow teeth when they are pressed by the animal biting.”
“But you don’t call that ’ere a hanimal, sir?” said Smith, as he wiped the perspiration from his forehead.