ainty. He was making straight for it."

"A snake!" cried Nick, starting up in horror. "So there is, I declare.
The nasty brute! I don't know whether it is venomous or not, but I'm
much obliged, even if it isn't. They are not nice things up a fellow's
leg!"

"Hand him over here," said Charles Lavie. "Oh ay, I know this fellow.
He is called the cerastes, and is venomous, I believe, though not one of
the worst kinds of poisonous snakes. You are well out of it, Nick, I
can tell you, and must look more carefully about you in this country
before you sit down in a place like this. Some of the reptiles are so
nearly the colour of the ground, or the trees, that even an old stager
may be taken in."

"Are there any large pythons in these parts?" asked Warley. "I've heard
two quite different accounts. One says that they are never found so far
south as this; the other, that they are to be met with thirty or forty
feet long, and as thick round as a stout man. What is the truth of the
matter?"

"Well, the truth is something between the two, I believe, as is
generally the case," said the surgeon. "They are certainly not common
in Southern Africa, since people who have lived here all their lives
have never seen one. But now and then they are to be met with. I know
persons who have seen serpents' skins thirty feet long in the possession
of natives; and one case I heard of, in which a skin was exhibited fully
ten feet longer than that."

"Are they difficult to kill?" asked Frank.

"Not if you bide your time," said Lavie. "If you come upon them when
they are hungry, they--the larger ones, that is--are more than a match
for even the strongest men: and unless they are approached unawares, and
wounded, so as to destroy their muscular power, a struggle with them
would be most dangerous. But after they have gorged their prey, they
are killed as easily as so many sheep--more easily in fact, for they are
quite torpid."

"What are the worst snakes found in these parts?" inquired Gilbert.
"The cobra and the puff adder, I should say," returned the surgeon.
"The first will spring at you as if it was discharged out of some
engine, and with such force, that if it fails to strike its mark it will
overshoot the spot by several feet. The natives call it the
hair-serpent, and are in great terror of it. If no sufficient remedy is
applied, its bite will cause death in less than an hour."

"_Is_ there any sufficient remedy?" rejoine