The successful commencement of this part of the day’s hunt was somewhat curiously brought about by the major.

 

Most people have a distinct and strong antipathy for some creature which has the power of inspiring them with a species of loathing, amounting almost to terror. Some who would face a mad bull coolly enough spring with disgust from a cockroach or a centipede. Others there are who would permit a mouse to creep about their person with indifference, but would shudder at the bare idea of a frog happening to get under their bedclothes. Now Major Garret’s peculiar horror was a serpent. He was a daring man by nature, and experience had made him almost foolhardy. He would have faced a lion, or an enraged elephant, any day without flinching, and cared nothing for a buffalo-bull, however mad, provided he had a trustworthy gun in his hand; but a serpent would cause him to leap into the air like a kangaroo, and if it chanced to come at him unawares he would fly from it like the wind, in a paroxysm of horror—if not fear!

 

There was no lack of serpents in that region to trouble the worthy major. Numbers of them, of all kinds and sizes, were to be seen. One in particular, which Mafuta killed with an assegai, was eight feet three inches long, and so copiously supplied with poison that one of the dogs which attacked it, and was bitten, died almost instantaneously, while another died in about five minutes. Tom Brown, on another occasion, knocked over one of the same species, and it continued to distil pure poison from the fangs for hours after its head was cut off. Besides these there were the puff-adders, which were very dangerous; and several vipers, as well as many other kinds which were comparatively harmless. But the poor major’s horror was so great as to cause him to regard the whole family in one light. He never paused to observe whether a serpent was poisonous. Enough for him that it was one of the hated race, to be killed in a violent hurry or fled from in tremendous haste!

 

This being the case, it is not to be regarded as a wonder that, when the party, early in the day, were passing a thicket out of which glided a very large serpent, the major should give a shout and incontinently discharge both barrels at it simultaneously. It chanced to be a python of great size, full fifteen feet long, and thicker than a man’s thigh, but a really harmless species of serpent. The major, however, did not know this, or did not care. His shots, although fired at random, hit the creature in the spine; nevertheless it retained power to raise its head fully five feet in the air, and to open its mouth in a very threatening manner within a few feet of the major’s face. This was more than he could bear. He turned, dropped his gun, and fled like a maniac, while his comrades, who had recognised the species of serpent, stood laughing at him heartily. He did not stop until he dashed headlong into a thicket, far away to the right of their line of march. Here the “wait-a-bit” thorns effectually checked his progress.

分享到：