“We can ascertain its length exactly,” said Lavie; “I have got a yard measure here; and here too is the remainder of the tail. Stretch the body straight out, Frank, and I’ll soon tell you the measurement.”
The serpent was accordingly measured, and was found to be some inches more than nineteen feet long.
“What kind of snake is it?” asked Frank, when this point had been determined.
“A python, or boa-constrictor, no doubt,” answered the surgeon; “they give them other names in these parts, but that is the creature. No other description of serpents that I ever heard of attempts to crush up its prey by muscular pressure.”
“But serpents which do that are seldom or never venomous, are they?” inquired Wilmore.
“I believe not,” answered Lavie, “but that point has been disputed. Omatoko calls the reptile an ‘ondara,’ and insists upon it that its bite is not only poisonous, but causes certain death. It may be so. It is evident that it would have bitten Ernest if it could; and serpents that are devoid of venom do not often bite. Well, I suppose now that we have done measuring the snake, we may throw him away. The Hottentots, I believe, eat their flesh. But I conclude none of us have any great inclination to make our dinner off him.”
“No, thank you, sir,” said Frank, “not for me.”
“Nor for me either, doctor,” cried Nick. “I think I’d rather go without food for a week. Here, Ernest, old fellow—you had better go and lie down a bit. You look as if you were having it out with the python still.”
Warley was too unwell to rejoin the party all that day and the next. The shock he had undergone was a very severe one; and would in all likelihood have prostrated any one of his companions for a far longer period. He lay under the shade of the trees on the soft grass the whole day, neither speaking himself nor heeding the remarks of others. Always inclined to be serious and thoughtful, this incident had had the effect of turning his mind to subjects for which his light-hearted companions had little relish, and which Lavie himself could hardly follow. Even when he resumed the old round of occupations, as he did in the course of the third day, Frank and Nick noticed a change in him, which they could not understand.
Meanwhile Omatoko’s bow and arrows proceeded rapidly, and were completed on the morning of the third day. Their construction was a great puzzle to the English lads. The bow was a little less than three feet long, and perhaps three-quarters of an inch thick—neatly enough shaped, and rounded off, but looking little better than a child’s toy. Omatoko had strung it with some sinew from the carcass of the goat. He had looped this over the upper end of the bow, and rolled it round the other in such a fashion that by merely twisting the string like a tourniquet, it might be strung to any degree of tension. The arrows too were wholly different from any they had ever seen. The strong reeds brought from the edge of the water had been cut off in lengths of about two feet. At one end the notch was inserted; to the other a movable head, made of bone, was attached, which stuck fast enough to the shaft during its flight through the air, but which became detached from it as soon as it was fixed in the body of any animal. These bone-heads, Omatoko told them, were always dipped in some poison, which caused even a slight puncture made by them to be fatal. The entrails of the kaa, or poison grub, were considered the most efficient for this purpose; but this was not to be met with at all times or in all places, and the juice of the euphorbia or the venom of serpents was sometimes substituted. In the present instance he meant to steep the bone-heads in the poison of the ondara, which he had carefully preserved. Omatoko assured them that when they set out for his village (as they probably would on the following day), they would soon have an opportunity of testing the efficiency of his weapons, and laughingly challenged them to a trial of skill between his bow and arrows and their guns.