y, Johnny?" but
Johnny only grinned.

After the boys had eaten, as only boys can eat, they crawled through
the vines and among the thorns of the overgrown plantation. They
found stalks of sugar-cane and bunches of bananas; wide-spreading
guava and lime trees, loaded with fruit; and tall Avocado pear trees
from which hung purpling globes of that great, creamy, most
delicious fruit, commonly called alligator pear. They filled with
fruit the shirts they wore, till they bulged like St. Nicholas, and
made many trips between the trees and their canoe. As Dick was
standing beside a lime tree, he heard a sound near him like the
whirring of a big locust. Dick had never before heard the angry
jarring of the rattles of the great king of snakes, but he didn't
need to be told the meaning of the blood-curdling sound, which
seemed to come from all directions at once. He gazed about him for a
moment, with every muscle tense, until he caught sight of the head
of the reptile waving slowly to and fro above the irregular coils of
his body. The snake seemed to be within striking distance and the
unnerved boy sprang suddenly away from it, landing among the
thorn-bearing branches of a big lime tree. Dick soon recovered his
nerve, and hunting up a big stick, went cautiously in search of the
reptile, which he found still coiled. He broke the creature's back
with his first blow and had struck several more when Johnny came
crawling through the undergrowth, and called out:

"Want to save his skin?"

"Sure," replied Dick, who hadn't thought of it before.

"Then don't smash him any more and I'll show you how to round-skin
him. He's dead enough, now. A feller from New York showed me how. He
skinned 'em for a livin'. Birds, too. Said he'd give me ten dollars
if I'd get him the skin of one of these fork-tailed kites. He wanted
the nest and eggs, too. Say, but he could skin things. Skin a bird
without losin' a feather or gettin' a drop o' blood on it. Said the
best way to skin snakes was 'fore they was dead."

As Johnny began cutting the skin free from the jaws of the reptile,
the long, needle-like fangs dripped yellow venom and Dick, looking
on with a white face, half whispered:

"Suppose you happened to touch those fangs?"

"Ain't a-goin' to touch 'em. Wish I had my pliers here, to pull 'em
out. You oughter save 'em, and the skull, too. The feller I was
tellin' yer about always did."

"I don't want them; makes me sick to look at them," said