"Look there; and you were going to walk right up against it! Oh! Frank, what a horrible monster!" Andy replied, in trembling tones, as he strove to point toward something that he had seen just in the nick of time.
"Whew! I should say you were right! Ain't he a dandy, though? And if I saw him at all, I thought it was a great big vine hanging from that tree! Ugh! look at him stretch his mouth, would you? Andy, thanks to your sharp eyes I'm here, instead of in his slimy folds. I guess he could crush an ox. They say nothing can stand the pressure, once they get a couple of folds around."
"Is it a python?" gasped Andy, his horrified eyes glued on the spectacle of the slightly swaying ten feet of snake that hung from the limb of a great tree, in part as thick as Frank's thigh.
"About the same thing," replied Frank. "Down here they call them anacondas, and in other parts of the world they're boa-constrictors. I guess the whole bunch belongs to the same family of squeezers. But that fellow is in our way."
"Well, yes, if you're still determined to run the aeroplane across lots toward this side of the opening," Andy remarked with a shudder. "Why, perhaps that old chap might get gay, and grab hold, just when we expected to go sailing off. That would be a calamity, not only for him, but the Bird boys in the bargain."
"All right. Then he's got to get his," Frank observed.
"What are you going to do?" demanded the other, nervously.
"Take a crack at his head," came the reply. "Once let a flat-nosed bullet from this little Marlin hard shooter smack him on the coco, and there'll be a funeral in the anaconda family."
"But for goodness' sake make sure work of it, Frank. What if you just wounded the monster? He'd come whirling along at us like a hurricane. And I'm sure he must be thirty feet long, if he's a dozen. Look at the thickness of his neck, would you? Be mighty careful, for his head's swinging a bit, you notice. That was what made me get sight of him. Say, Frank!"
"Well, hurry up. He may take a notion to move off, and I'd lose my chance, Andy."