Although the sheathing of our shoes and gaiters was impervious to their fangs, the attack was too horrible not to resent. With one accord we began trampling them under heel, destroying the creatures by scores. But the more we killed the more appeared, creeping upon us from numberless tiny cracks in the walls. They came straight to the attack, fighting mad at being disturbed, and we soon began to tire of the hopeless battle.
“Let’s cut it!” said Archie, and there was no dissenting voice. Gradually we withdrew toward the mouth of the cave, the snakes following persistently, until when we stood upon the ledge it looked as though we must abandon the position and seek another camp.
“What are the things, anyhow?” asked Ned.
“Reetee,” said Chaka; “the most deadly serpents known.”
Nux and Bryonia knew snakes pretty well, having had large experience with them in the South Seas. Bry begged Allerton to give him the key to the supply chest, and going to it he searched for and brought out a package of dry mustard. Then he took the lamp and reëntering the cavern with it, the black kicked the bodies of the dead and dying serpents together in a heap and scattered over it fully half the mustard the package contained. Next moment he came running back to us, and was none too soon, for with a rush the vermin attacking us wriggled back into the cave, where they made straight for the mustard heap, burying their fangs in the carcasses of their damaged brethren.
The result was astonishing. Almost instantly the deadly reetee succumbed to “mustard poison,” as our blacks gravely called it, and in five minutes that lot of harmless mustard—harmless to us, that is—had accomplished more than our boot-heels could do in a week. The odor of the mustard drew every serpent from its hiding place, and contact with the yellow powder was its death warrant. We didn’t care for the cave, with its horrid carpet of dead reetee, but at least we were now free from the vipers’ attacks.
“The fact is,” said Paul, “we can’t stay here, or anywhere else on the mountain, for long. Even if our approach has not been observed, which we have little reason to hope, the spies of the Tcha, which are certainly on the lookout, will soon locate us. So it is necessary we get into the hidden city as soon as possible.”
“On which side of the mountain is the entrance?” I asked Chaka.
“I do not think there is any entrance,” said he; “at least, none that is known to those outside.”
“Yet your father visited this city?”