but he had
dropped his knife in the fall. This, too, Wyvern picked up, and now,
feeling equal to the pair of them, he went back to where the man and the
snake were still struggling.

And a ghastly and horrible scene met his eyes. The man, who seemed to
have gone completely mad, was plucking and tearing at the snake,
uttering the most hideous howls, and literally foaming at the mouth, as
he strove to free himself from those terrible coils. He must have been
bitten again and again, as now with his hands within the reptile's very
mouth he strove to tear its head asunder. The struggle had brought him
to the brink of a much deeper part of the _donga_, and now, as Wyvern
looked, puzzled what to do next, seemed to be weakening or to lose his
balance. He swayed, then toppled heavily through the bushes, and man
and snake went crashing down the well-nigh perpendicular bank.

His own peril thus removed, Wyvern's blood curdled within him at the
horror he had witnessed. He went to the place and looked over, but
could see nothing. It was too much overhung with bushes--and save for
where these had been displaced by a heavy body crashing through, there
was no sign or trace of life; no sound either. Probably with all that
venom in his system the wretched Kafir was already in the state of coma
which should precede death. For him there was no chance, absolutely
none. Wyvern went back to where he had left the other.

"Now, Sixpence," he said, speaking in the _taal_, which in the Cape
Colony is the usual means of communication between white men and
natives, "stand up, and put your hands behind you. I'm going to tie
them."

But the fellow begged and prayed that he might be spared this. He would
not try to run away, he protested. Where was the use, since his wife
and children were at the huts, and besides, was he not well known?
Farther he felt very ill, and hardly able to walk as it was, from the
effects of the terrible blow the Baas had given him. Perhaps, too, on
the strength of that the Baas might bring himself to forgive him. He
would serve him so faithfully after that--and the Baas could take twice
the value of the sheep out of his wages. Surely the Baas might bring
himself to forgive him.

Wyvern, contemplating him, thought he might even be fool enough to do
that; and as he put back into his pocket the lanyard of _reimpje_
wherewith he had intended to tie the fellow's hands, he feared that he
might.

"I don't k