He had been close to death. Only the slipping of the snake’s tail from the slippery bough had saved him. His brave heart alone would not have availed.
With a shudder of repulsion he examined his foe, after the thrashing had subsided and the great snake lay quiet.
Bomba had seen much larger snakes, but this was quite large enough, the boy reflected, as he rubbed his chest, bruised and sore from the pressure of the folds. The reptile was about twelve feet long and as thick as Bomba’s leg.
The horrible head, lying a little distance from the body, still gaped at him, though the malignant glitter of the eyes had been glazed by death. Bomba shuddered as he thought how nearly those awful fangs had been imbedded in his throat. But they had sunk into his shoulder.
Now, as well as he could, he examined the wound. It was causing him severe pain, but no apprehension. He knew that the boa constrictor carried no poison in its jaws. Its terrible crushing power was its main reliance. His shoulder would be sore for a few days, and that was all. He cleansed the wound with water from a pool, and then wiped his bloody hunting knife on a wad of leaves.
“You did well,” he said aloud, addressing his trusty weapon as he thrust it back into his girdle of cloth. “You have served Bomba many times, but never better than this.”
Once more he went on his way, but, warned by his adventure, his eyes scanned the trees above him as carefully as they did the ground before him.
Before long he had passed through the dreary ygapo and heard in the distance the musical tinkle of a waterfall. It was a sound that made his heart leap with pleasure. Again and again he had viewed the fall, entranced, as the spray-crested torrent dashed over the lip of the cliff into the whirling vortex of water beneath that formed the first of the series of great rapids rushing onward to the river.
Bomba loved the waterfall. It spoke to him in a vague and mystic way of forces unchained. As he came now in full sight of it, there was something in the power and wild beauty of the rushing waters that struck an answering chord in his soul, causing his blood to run more swiftly and making his eyes kindle with delight.
What made him feel that way? Bomba brooded over this, as he brooded over many of the strange thoughts and emotions that puzzled him.