I took out my knife and opened it.
“Oh, I say, my lad, don’t look so white. Wern’t ’fraid, were you?”
“Yes,” I said, huskily. “I could not help being frightened.”
“Not you,” said Morgan, roughly; “you wasn’t half frightened, or you wouldn’t have done what you did. Now then, my gentleman, you’re never going to bite and kill any one, so—there—and there!”
As he spoke he placed one foot a few inches from the rattlesnake’s head, the creature opening its mouth and making a feeble attempt to bite, but the next moment my keen knife had divided the neck, and Morgan picked up the piece.
“Now look ye here, Master George, I shouldn’t wonder if this gentleman’s got two sharp teeth at the top here like an adder has at home. They’re the poison ones, and—yes, what did I tell you?”
He laughed as he opened the creature’s wide mouth with the blade of the knife, and drew forward two keen-looking fangs, to show me.
“There you are,” he said. “Just like adders’, only theirs is little tiny things just like a sharp bit of glass, and they lay back in the roof of their mouths so that you have to look close to see ’em.”
“Throw the horrible poisonous thing away,” I said.
“Yes; we’ll pitch it all together in the river. Some big alligator will think it’s a fine worm, and I hope he’ll like it. One moment; I must find my knife.”