Chapter Sixteen.
The dawn was only just beginning to dapple the skies, when the voice of Henryk Vander Heyden was heard rousing his Hottentots and superintending the inspanning of the oxen and the saddling of the horses. The sun was hardly above the horizon before the party had set out, Vander Heyden and Hardy riding two or three hundred yards in advance with their guns and revolvers loaded, keeping a keen lookout as they advanced, and two of the Hottentot servants following in the same manner in the rear. In this manner they advanced for three hours or so, through a country resembling in character that which they had passed yesterday, with the difference that the ground was harder and drier, so that the progress of the waggons was less interrupted. About nine o’clock they halted for the first meal of the day on the edge of a dense mass of shrubs and underwood, through which nothing but the woodman’s axe or a herd of elephants could have forced their way. Here occurred an incident which was remembered by one of the party, at all events, long afterwards. Redgy Margetts had alighted, and was about to take his place at the breakfast table, if the rough boards taken from the cart, on which the viands were spread, could be so designated, when he saw what he took to be the end of a long green plantain among the stems of the cacti. They are very delicious eating; and, thinking to add to the attractions of the meal, he took hold of one end to draw it out. To his surprise and alarm, he felt it move and writhe in his grasp, and the next moment a hideous green head made its appearance from the bushes, and would have sprung on him, if Matamo, who was calling out to Margetts to warn him, had not dexterously flung the large knife which he was holding in his hand, wounding the snake in the neck and disconcerting its aim. It missed Redgy’s face, at which it had darted, and fell on the ground close to him, and Haxo, who had caught up an axe, struck its head off.
“A lucky escape, Mr Margetts,” said Matamo. “A big mamba, that; he is seven or eight feet long. I never saw a bigger.”
“The brute?” exclaimed Redgy. “I took him for a big cucumber, or something of that kind. Is he poisonous, Matamo?”
“Yes, Mr Redgy, very poisonous. A man, if he was bit by him, would die in an hour, perhaps in less. I’ve known one die in three-quarters of an hour.”
“You must be careful, Mr Margetts,” said Annchen, who had witnessed what had passed with a shudder of horror. “I have been learning a good deal about the African snakes. They are the worst things in the country. We newcomers cannot be too careful.”
“You are right, miss,” said Matamo. “Some of them look like sticks or green stalks or stems of trees lying on the ground. Strangers sometimes don’t find out that they are snakes, till they are bitten.”
“But, as a rule, they won’t harm you unless you provoke them,” said Vander Heyden. “They have the cobra in India as well as here. In which country do you think it is the most venomous, Hardy?”