There was a movement of the sluggish coils. Bomba watched them with a horrid fascination, scarcely daring to breathe.
Gradually the coils unwound. The hideous triangular head came in sight. The reptile looked slowly about as though deciding which way to go.
Then the snake saw Bomba!
CHAPTER X
WRITHING COILS
Bomba saw the malignant fury that came into the snake’s eyes. He knew that the reptile had seen him, and over the boy’s face, like a pallid cloak, spread the calmness of despair.
This then was the end! He might live perhaps ten, fifteen, possibly twenty minutes after the poison fangs had sunk into his flesh, and they would be minutes of such intolerable agony that death, when it came, would be welcomed as a friend.
The snake uncoiled and crawled swiftly toward Bomba until it came within striking distance. Then it threw itself into a coil and reared its head.
Bomba saw that head, those open jaws dripping poison, closed his eyes and waited for death.
But even while he waited, something swished past his head, coming from the tree above.
It was a castanha nut, one of those huge, heavy nuts that, falling on a man’s head, may fracture his skull.