Guessing nearabouts the length of the serpent they cut down a very strong bamboo cane that if not longer is not shorter than the reptile and at the end they fasten a stout piece of rattan ably folded into a noose.
Terminated his repast the boa retires to his den and settles down for a little nap that will help his digestion.
This is the right moment: two men, with great caution approach the hollow, keeping in their hands the knot made of the Indian cane. Very gently but with a rapid movement they lift up the snake's head and slip it through the noose. The snake gives a shake but it is too late. At a sign from the two who have disturbed its slumber, the others pull hard the bamboos that they are holding in their hands. The noose is pulled tighter and the boa constrictor fights furiously to get free. But the more it resists the closer the knot becomes. The struggle between captor and captured is not soon finished. The monster pulls, jumps, writhes, sometimes giving such sudden springs as to make the tenacious Sakais run here and there to keep their equilibrium and to stay out of its reach.
Shooting poisoned arrows through the blowpipe.
p. [205].
Often they strive so for more than an hour but at last the serpent is suffocated and is reduced to a lifeless mass. Then its victors carry it triumphantly to their village where it makes a banquet for almost all the inhabitants.
The Sakais would find but a scanty result from their hunting and shooting-, and their own lives would not be sufficiently protected if the forest did not provide them with an inexhaustible and infallible means of dealing death with their blowpipes and darts.