“'Twas the steam escaping,” said one.
“A goose hissing,” said another.
“The wind.”
“A trick to scare the sailor,” thought a good many; but I knew it was a rattlesnake in his deadly coil!
The horror of that moment I shall not attempt to describe; every second I expected to hear the shriek of the sailor as the deadly fangs would penetrate his flesh, and I knew if a vein were stricken no power on earth could avail him, and I powerless to warn him of his danger.
“It sounded monstrous like a rattlesnake!” observed a passenger, “but there are no doctors or fool students on board, and nobody but cusses like them would be taking snakes 'bout.
“I was gwine up the Massassip wunst when a rattlesnake belonging to a medercal student on board, got out and bit one of the passengers; the poor crittur didn't live ten minutes, and the sawbone's 'prentice not much longer I reckon.”
My hair stood on end, for there was an earnestness about the man that told me he was not joking.
“You did'nt kill him, surely?” asked some one.
“Oh, no! we did'nt 'zactly kill him, sich as cuttin' his throat, or puttin' lead in his holler cimblin, for that would have been takin' the law inter our own hands; but we guv him five hundred lashes, treated him to a coat of tar and feathers, made a clean crop of one ear, and a swal-low-forked-slit-under-bit-and-half-crop of the other, an' put him out on a little island up to his mouth in water an' the river risin' a plum foot an hour!”