I could not help a shudder.
“Coil round you.”
The shudder felt now was the serpent wrapping me round.
“And giving you a severe squeeze,” continued my uncle. “It is a hundred to one against its teeth catching you in the face, and it is doubtful whether they would penetrate your clothes, and even if they did you would suffer no worse than from a few thorns, for these constricting reptiles are not poisonous.”
“It don’t sound very nice, uncle,” I said, feeling as if my face was showing white through the brown of the sunburns.
“No, Nat, it does not,” he said; “but now I have told you the worst I may as well say something on the other side. Now the chances are that the brute will try its best to escape, and be shot in the act; and even supposing that it did seize you, which is no more likely than that it should seize Ebo or me, we should immediately get hold of it by the neck and have its head off before it knew where it was.”
“Yes, uncle, I know you would,” I said with more confidence and a strange thrill of excitement running through me. “Let me come, please.”
“You shall, Nat,” he replied; “and now I’ll confess to you, my boy, that I should have felt disappointed if you had held back. Come along, my lad, and I think we shall soon slay this modern dragon.”
All this time Ebo had been looking at us wonderingly; but no sooner did we examine our guns and start forward, than he shouldered his club and went before us towards the piece of marshy ground.
I walked on by uncle’s side with my gun ready, and all the time I kept on wondering what he would have said to me if he had known how nervous I felt.