‘But she’ll burst by and bye, and she’ll be making a noise as big as your gun, so people say, but I’ll never was hearing her myself.’
‘Weel, weel, friend, I’ll believe a’ the rest of your story when the reptile bursts, but not till then. As for the creature’s death, I daur to say you gave it a good clout over the head with the gun, which you had in your hand, for it does not take much, I believe, to kill them.’
‘I’ll not be doing that at all, that I know of,’ said Eachainn, ‘and may be if I had, it’ll be the worst for me and for you as well.’
‘How so, man?’
‘’Cause I might shust struck her on the tail instead of her head, and then she’d jump up ever so high, and then she’ll be come down, more deadly than she’ll be before. Ye need not be shaking your head, sir; it’s shust quite true; but we must be clever, for we’ll be having a long way to go before we’ll come to Dunvegan. I must do shust one thing first, if you please,’
So saying, Eachainn pulled out his core or dirk, and proceeded with great deliberation to cut off the head of the viper, and then he divided the body into five equal parts.
‘I doot,’ muttered the gauger, with a look of disgust, ‘I doot he is going to cook it! Ugh, it’s quite awfu’.’
The honest man’s apprehensions were, however, somewhat premature, for after hewing the reptile to pieces, as described, Eachainn cut with his knife six holes in the turf, into each of which he placed a bit of the snake, and filling up the holes again, stamped down these viperine graves with his heel.
‘Indeed, friend, I think you have taken a good deal of unnecessary trouble in giving that reptile Christian burial.’
‘No, no,’ answered Eachainn, ‘I’ll be thinking of the lives of other peoples, and their hells too.’