gratifying
gifts of eggs, bread, rice, beer, pumpkins, and all the produce of the
land.

But we must not forestall. Before these dainties were enjoyed that
night the other members of the expedition had to come in with the result
of their day's hunt. Let us therefore turn for a little to follow their
footsteps.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

SHOWS THAT TOO HIGH A PRICE IS SOMETIMES PAID FOR SUCCESS IN HUNTING.

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