“Are they difficult to kill?” asked Frank.
“Not if you bide your time,” said Lavie. “If you come upon them when they are hungry, they—the larger ones, that is—are more than a match for even the strongest men: and unless they are approached unawares, and wounded, so as to destroy their muscular power, a struggle with them would be most dangerous. But after they have gorged their prey, they are killed as easily as so many sheep—more easily in fact, for they are quite torpid.”
“What are the worst snakes found in these parts?” inquired Gilbert. “The cobra and the puff adder, I should say,” returned the surgeon. “The first will spring at you as if it was discharged out of some engine, and with such force, that if it fails to strike its mark it will overshoot the spot by several feet. The natives call it the hair-serpent, and are in great terror of it. If no sufficient remedy is applied, its bite will cause death in less than an hour.”
“Is there any sufficient remedy?” rejoined Nick. “I thought there was no cure.”
“It’s not so bad as that, Nick. There are remedies for most bites—the cobra’s for instance. There is a root which the mangoust always eats, when it feels itself bitten by a cobra, and which is, so far as is known, a complete cure. Eau de luce and sweet milk are generally given in this country for a snake’s bite, and the natives have beans and serpent stones, which, it is said, effect a cure. But the best thing to do—what I should have done in your case, Nick, if you had been bitten—is, first to fasten a ligature as tight as possible above the wounded part, and then cauterise or cut away the injured flesh. Snakes’ bites are nasty things in these hot countries, and one can’t be too careful. But come, it is time we move on again. We ought to reach the river banks early in the afternoon.”
They recommenced their march accordingly, and had proceeded half a mile or so further, when Frank suddenly called upon them to stop.
“What can that noise be?” he said. “I have heard it two or three times in the course of the last few minutes. It doesn’t sound like the cry of a bird, or beast either. And yet I suppose it must be.”
“I didn’t hear anything,” said Gilbert. “Nor I,” added Warley. “But my hearing is not nearly as good as Frank’s. I’ve often noticed that.”
“Let us stop and listen,” suggested Charles.
They all stood still, intently listening. Presently a faint sound was wafted to them, apparently from a great distance—from the edge of the sandy desert, they fancied, which was still visible beyond the wooded tracts.