He exhibited two deep scratches on the back of his right hand. On beholding them, his companions uttered a cry of commiseration, and stood gazing at the unfortunate man with an expression that seemed to say: “You must surely die.”
His colour soon changed to a deeper brown. Then his fingers and lips began to move spasmodically, and his eyes assumed a fixed and glassy expression.
In about ten minutes from the time he had been bitten, he seemed quite unconscious of anything but agony; and would have rolled into the fire, had he not been held back by those around him.
In less than half an hour, he was dead,—dead, while the body of the serpent with the mangled head was still writhing along the grass.
The Makololo was buried at sunrise, three hours after death; and so virulent is the poison of the picakholu that, ere the body was deposited in the grave, it was already in a state of decomposition!
Chapter Eighteen.
A Giraffe Chase.
In the evening of the twelfth day after leaving the Limpopo, they reached a small river, which Macora called the Luize. He informed the hunters, that one day’s journey down this stream would take him to the ruins of the village where he had been born and had lived until within the last two or three years, and his desire to see his native place was about to be gratified.