hts suggested, the whole camp soon afterwards
sank into repose. Tent-doors were drawn and curtains of waggon-tilts
let down. The boers, sticking their big pipes in their hatbands,
wrapped themselves in greatcoats, and, regardless of snake or scorpion,
stretched their limbs on the bare ground, while Hottentots, negroes, and
Bushmen, rolling themselves in sheepskin karosses, lay coiled up like
balls with their feet to the fire. Only once was the camp a little
disturbed, during the early part of the night, by the mournful howl of a
distant hyena. It was the first that the newcomers had heard, and most
of those who were awake raised themselves on their elbows eagerly to
listen.

Jerry was just dropping into slumber at the time. He sat bolt upright
on hearing the cry, and when it was repeated he made a wild grasp at the
blunderbuss, but Dally was beforehand. He caught up the weapon, and
this probably saved an explosion.

"Come, lie down, you imp!" he said, somewhat sternly.

Jerry obeyed, and his nose soon told that he had reached the land of
dreams.

Dally then quietly drew the charge of shot, but left the powder and laid
the piece in its former position. Turning over with the sigh of one
whose active duties for the day have been completed, he then went to
sleep.

Gradually the fires burned low, and gave out such flickering uncertain
light, when an occasional flame leaped up ever and anon, that to
unaccustomed eyes it might have seemed as though snakes were crawling
everywhere, and Jerry Goldboy, had he been awake, would have beheld a
complete menagerie in imagination. But Jerry was now in blessed
oblivion.

When things were in this condition, that incomprehensible subtlety, the
brain of Junkie Brook--or something else--so acted as to cause the
urchin to give vent to a stentorian yell. Strong though it was, it did
not penetrate far through the canvas tent, but being, as we have said,
within a few feet of Jerry's ear, it sounded to that unhappy man like
the united, and as yet unknown, shriek of all the elephants and
buffaloes in Kafirland.

Starting up with a sharp cry he stretched out his hand towards the
blunderbuss, but drew it back with a thrill of horror. A huge black
snake lay in its place!

To seize his truncheon was the act of a moment. The next, down it came
with stunning violence on the snake. The reptile instantly exploded
with a bellowing roar of smoke and flame, which roused the whole camp