“Well, that’s what I never could quite tell, Master Bart, for that bite, and what came after, seemed to make me quite silly like, and as if it took all the memory out of me. All I can recollect about it is that I was with—let me see! who was it? Ah! I remember now: our Sam; and we’d sat down one hot day on the side of a bit of a hill, just to rest and have one smoke. Then we got up to go, and, though we ought to have been aware of it, we warn’t, there was plenty of snakes about I was just saying to Sam, as we saw one gliding away, that I didn’t believe as they could sting as people said they could, when I suppose I kicked again’ one as was lying asleep, and before I knew it a’most there was a sharp grab, and a pinch at my leg, with a kind of pricking feeling; and as I gave a sort of a jump, I see a long bit of snake just going into a hole under some stones, and he gave a rattle as he went.
“‘Did he bite you?’ says Sam.
“‘Oh, just a bit of a pinch,’ I says. ‘Not much. It won’t hurt me.’
“‘You’re such a tough un,’ says Sam, by way of pleasing me, and being a bit pleased, I very stupidly said,—‘yes, I am, old fellow, regular tough un,’ and we tramped on, for I’d made up my mind that I wouldn’t take no more notice of it than I would of the sting of a fly.”
“Keep a good look-out all round, Joses,” said Bart, interrupting him.
“That’s what I am doing, Master Bart, with both eyes at once. I won’t let nothing slip.”
In fact, as they walked on, Joses’ eyes were eagerly watching on either side, nothing escaping his keen sight; for frontier life had made him, like the savages, always expecting danger at every turn.
“Well, as I was a saying,” he continued, “the bite bothered me, but I wasn’t going to let Sam see that I minded the least bit in the world, but all at once it seemed to me as if I was full of little strings that ran from all over my body down into one leg, and that something had hold of one end of ’em, and kept giving ’em little pulls and jerks. Then I looked at Sam to see if he’d touched me, and his head seemed to have swelled ’bout twice as big as it ought to be, and his eyes looked wild and strange.
“‘What’s matter, mate?’ I says to him, and there was such a ding in my ears that when I spoke to him, Master Bart, my voice seemed to come from somewhere else very far off, and to sound just like a whisper.
“‘What’s the matter with you?’ he says, and taking hold of me, he gave me a shake. ‘Here, come on,’ he says. ‘You must run.’