rom the boat. In looking
around and above he saw the snake sweeping about in its grand circular
vibrations, and at the same time perceived that he was within their
range.

It was but the simple obedience of instinct to leap to one side, which
he did; but as ill luck would have it, hampered by the _impedimenta_
carried in his arms, he came in violent collision with one of the stems
of the banyan, which not only sent him back with a rebound, but threw
him down upon the earth, flat on his face. He would have done better by
lying still, for in that position the snake could not have coiled around
and constricted him. And the python rarely takes to its teeth till it
has tried its powers of squeezing.

But the ship-carpenter, ignorant of this herpetological fact, and as an
Irishman not highly gifted either with patience or prudence, after
scrambling a while upon his hands and knees, stood once more upon his
feet.

He had scarcely got into an erect attitude when his body was embraced by
a series of spiral annulations that extended from head to foot--huge
thick rings, slimy and clammy to the touch, which he knew to be the
foldings of the python.

Had there been any Lanoons, or Dyak pirates, within a mile's distance,
they might have heard the cry that escaped him. The forest birds heard
it afar off, and ceased their chatterings and warblings, so that there
was no sound for some time save the continuous shrieks and ejaculations
that came from Murtagh's lips.

Captain Redwood, altogether unarmed, leaped back into the pinnace to
seize the boat-hook, thinking it the best weapon for the occasion. It
might have been of service if obtainable in time. But long before he
could have returned with it the ship-carpenter's ribs would have been
compressed into a mass of broken bones, and the breath crushed out of
his body.

This would certainly have been the lamentable result but for a weapon
with which a Malay is always armed, carrying it on his body nearer than
his shirt, and almost as near as his skin. It was the _kris_. As a
matter of course, Saloo had one, and luckily for his old shipmate,
"Multa," he knew how to handle it with skill, so that, in driving its
twisted blade through the python's throat, he did not also impale upon
its point the jugular vein of the Irishman. He did the one dexterously
without doing the other, and the consequence was that the huge snake,
suffering keenly from having its throat pierced through,