ne of
the blacks uttered a faint cry, and he took the lead, following the
trail of something quickly, till he stopped short beneath a huge
fig-tree whose boughs spread far and wide.

The black here turned to Carey and pointed upward with his spear to
where, half hidden by the dense foliage, a clump of knots and folds upon
some interlacing horizontal boughs revealed the presence of a carpet
snake, whose soft warm brown and chocolate markings of various shades
were strikingly beautiful.

"Ugh! the monster!" exclaimed Carey, shrinking back. "Are you going to
kill it?"

"Mumkull, eatum. Good, good," cried Jackum, and the noise made below
roused the sleeping serpent, whose head rose up, showing the mark where
the mouth opened, and Carey could see the glistening forked tongue
darting in and out through the orifice at the apices of the jaws. And
now the creature seemed all in motion, fold gliding over fold, and one
great loop hanging down from the bough some fifteen feet above their
heads.

"I mustn't run off," thought Carey; "but it looks a dangerous brute."

He stood fast then, and the attack began, the blacks hurling their clubs
up at the reptile with such accuracy and force that in less than a
minute the creature had been struck in several places, and was striking
out with its jaws and lashing its tail furiously.

Another blow from a whizzing boomerang made the creature cease its
attempts to get to a safer part of the tree and writhe so violently in a
horrible knot of convolutions that it lost its hold upon the branch and
came down through the interlacing boughs with a rush and a thud upon the
ground.

Here it seemed to see its aggressors for the first time, and, gathering
itself up, its head rose with the jaws distended, and it struck at the
nearest black.

But his enemy was beforehand. Holding his spear with both hands he used
it as a British yeoman of old handled a quarter-staff, and a whistling
blow caught the reptile a couple of feet below the head, which dropped
inert, the vertebrae being broken, and a series of blows from other
spears, one aimed at the tail, finished the business.

The danger was over, and the serpent began to untwine itself, till it
lay out, a long heaving mass of muscles, completely disabled and dying
after the slow fashion of its kind.

"Why, it must be sixteen or eighteen feet long," thought Carey, and then
he stood looking on while the delighted blacks, who looked upon their
p