Then his anger at fate turned against himself.
“Bomba was a fool to sleep,” he gritted through his clenched teeth. “If he had been awake, he would have seen the storm approaching and would have found some cave or overhanging rock for shelter. Bomba is a fool and deserves to die.”
He began tearing at the branches with his one free hand, though he knew he could not lift that weight from his chest. He lifted his head and tried to reach the twigs with his teeth. He was half mad with rage and black despair.
Then, in a turning of his head, he saw a sight that chilled his blood. His body became instantly as rigid as stone.
Not ten feet from him he saw a mass of coils that he recognized from the markings as that of the Brazilian rattlesnake, the jararaca.
The mass lay almost motionless and, except for an occasional slight heaving as from breathing, the reptile might have seemed dead. The head was not visible.
Was it sleeping? Or had it perhaps been wounded, swept to that place as Bomba had been by the branches of the tree?
If the reptile were sleeping, any movement of Bomba’s might wake it. Even if it were wounded, it would certainly make an effort to destroy the lad if it should discover him.
It seemed only a matter of dying in one way or another. Either the snake or the swamp would bring him death. In either case his death would be a horrible one.
Oh, if he were only on his feet, machete in hand!