“Poisonous?”
“Very likely. Perhaps some big ones. They’ll do to eat if we are very hungry.”
“Ugh!” ejaculated Mark, with a shudder.
“Well, I’m like the Yankee backwoodsman, Mark, my lad. He didn’t ‘hanker arter crows’ after he had eaten them once. I don’t ‘hanker arter’ snakes, but I’d sooner sit down to a section of boa-constrictor roasted in the ashes than starve.”
“I don’t think I would.”
“Wait till you are starving, my lad.”
“Should you say there are any big dangerous animals?” continued Mark, after a pause; “lions, or tigers, or leopards?”
“Certainly not; but there may be rhinoceros or elephant, if the island is big enough, or near the mainland, and—what the dickens is that?”
He jumped up as rapidly as Mark sprang to his feet, for just then there came, apparently not from very far off, so terrible a roar that the major ran to the nearest gun, examined the loading, and then stood with the weapon cocked.
Mark involuntarily caught his arm.