“What a fool I am!” muttered Ned. “Thinking about cutting sticks when there’s something ready here to be cut. I don’t want a stick.”
He whipped his long hunting-knife out of the sheath fitted to his belt, and the light flashed upon the keen-edged new blade which had never yet been used.
“Now then,” he said softly, “if I can only get one cut at you, my gentleman, you shan’t know where you are to-morrow.”
The plan was good, but not easy of performance, for he could not cut straight down at the reptile’s neck without injuring Jack’s arm, and for a few moments he stood watching and waiting for an opportunity, but none seemed likely to occur, and the serpent still held on by the boy’s wrist, and the front of its long, lithe, undulating body kept on gliding about over the brightly-ironed white duck sleeve, the head playing about the hollow of the elbow-joint, turning under the arm, and returning to the top again and again.
“I can’t get a cut at him—I can’t get a cut at him,” muttered Ned; and then a happy thought came: he stretched out the point of the glistening blade toward the serpent’s head, till it was a few inches from it.
“I don’t like doing it,” he muttered fretfully; “it’s running risks, and setting a dose myself, but I must—I must;” and he made the blade glitter and flash by agitating his hand.
It had the desired effect, for the head was raised sharply from the lad’s arm till it was six or seven inches above it, and the reptile seemed to be attracted for a moment by the bright light flashing from the steel.
Then the head was drawn back sharply, and darted forward as Ned expected, and with a slight jerk from the wrist he flicked the blade from left to right.
“Hah!” he cried joyfully, as the head dropped at his feet, and the long thin body writhed free from the lad’s hand and wrist; “a razor couldn’t have took it off cleaner. Hurray, Mr Jack! He half killed himself. But don’t—don’t stand like that. You’re not hurt bad, are you?”