Jungle and Stream: or, The Adventures of Two Boys in Siam. Fenn George Manville
Sahib; there shall not be a tear in the skin," cried the old hunter eagerly.
"Where shall they do it, father?" said Harry. "It will make such a mess here."
"Let them drag it down to the landing-stage, my boy, and they can sluice the bamboo flooring afterwards, and then peg out the skin to dry on the side. You will stay and see it done?"
"Yes, father," replied the boy, and he turned to Phra.
"Will you stop?"
"Of course. I came to stay," was the reply; "didn't you see that I sent the boatmen back?"
CHAPTER IV
FISHING WITH A WORM
"I say, Sree, hadn't you and your fellows better have a wash?" said Harry, as soon as Mr. Kenyon had re-entered the bungalow to go to his office on the other side for his regular morning work connected with the dispatching of rice and coffee down to the principal city.
"What good, Sahib?" said the man, looking up with so much wonder in his amiable, simple face, that both Phra and Harry burst out laughing, in which the men joined.
"Why, you are all so dirty, and you smell nasty and musky of that great snake."
"But we are going to skin it, Sahib, and we shall be much worse then."
"Oh yes, I forgot," said Harry.
"When we have done we shall all bathe and be quite clean, and go and thank the good Sahib before we depart."
He said a few words to his two men, and, gun in hand, the boys walked with them towards the boa, when a thought occurred to Harry.
"I say," he cried, "mind what you are about when you bathe, for there's a crocodile yonder, half as long again as that snake."
"Ah!" ejaculated the man, "then we must take care."
"So will we, Phra. We'll look out for him and try and get a shot."
"A big one?" said the Siamese lad.
"Yes, I think it is the biggest I have seen."
"Then we'll shoot him. But how bad you have made me! Before we became friends I followed our people's rule – never killing anything. Now this morning I am going to try and kill a crocodile, after helping to kill a snake."
"Well," said Harry, "I don't care about arguing who's right, but it seems to be very stupid not to kill those horrible great monsters which drag people who are bathing under water and eat them, and to be afraid to kill a tiger that springs upon the poor rice and coffee growers at the edges of the plantations."
"So it does," said Phra, with a dry look; "and I am trying not to be stupid. All, look there!"
Harry was already looking, for as one of the men took hold of the serpent's tail, in order to drag it down to the landing-place, it was snatched away, then raised up and brought down again heavily to lie heaving and undulating, the movement being continued right up to the head.
"You don't seem to have killed that," said Harry drily.
"No," replied Phra; "but I will," and he cocked his gun.
But Sree addressed a few words to him in his native tongue, and the lad nodded.
"What does he say?" asked Harry; "he can kill it more easily, without spoiling the skin?"
"Yes. Look. What a while these things take to die!"
"My father says that at home in England the country people say you can't kill a snake directly. It always lives till the sun sets."
"You haven't got snakes like that in England?"
"Oh no; the biggest are only a little more than a yard long."
"But how can they live like that? What has the sun to do with it?"
"Nothing. Father says it's only an old-fashioned superstition."
"Look! Sree's going to kill the snake now. He's a bad Buddhist."
"Never mind; he's a capital hunter. See what splendid things we've found when we've been with him," said Harry enthusiastically. "He seems to know the habits of everything in the jungle."
Harry ceased speaking, for Sree drew a knife from its sheath in the band of his sarong, or padung, whetted it on one of the stones of the rockery, and went to the head of the serpent, which was moving gently.
Sree bent down, extending his left hand to grip the reptile softly behind the head, and give it a mortal wound which would afterwards serve as the beginning of the cut to take off the beautifully marked skin.
But at the first touch, the reptile seemed to be galvanized into life, and coiling and knotting itself up, it began to twine and writhe with apparently as much vigour as before receiving the shots.
"Did you ever see such a brute?" cried Harry. "Take care, or you'll lose him."
"Oh, no, Sahib; I will not do that. Only let me get one cut, and I will soon make him still."
He waited for a few minutes till the reptile straightened itself out again, and then at a sign the two men followed their leader's example, throwing themselves down upon the fore part of the boa, which began to heave again, the lower part of the body writhing and flogging the earth.
But Sree was quite equal to the occasion. He had pinned the reptile's neck down with one hand, and managed to hold it till with all the skill of an old huntsman, he had slit up the skin, inserted his knife, and cleverly divided the vertebrae just behind the creature's head.
The moment this was done the tremendous thrashing of the tail part began to grow less violent, then grew more gentle still, and finally it lay undulating gently.
"He will die now," said the man, and the long, lithe body was dragged to the bottom of the garden and stretched out on the bamboo landing-stage beneath the attap roofing.
As soon as this was done, the three men went down to the water's edge, stripped off their sarongs, washed them, and spread them in the hot sun to dry, while, gun in hand, the two lads stood carefully scanning the river in search of enemies, so as to get a shot.
But no great reptile was in sight then, and they remained looking on while Sree and his men cleverly stripped off the boa's skin and stretched it out to dry, before fetching a couple of brass vessels from the back of the bungalow and using them to thoroughly remove all traces of their late work.
Their next duty was to take a couple of bamboos and thrust off the body of the serpent.
Sree, however, undertook to do this himself, telling his men to refill the brass vessels to sluice down the bamboo stage.
But instead of thrusting the repulsive-looking reptile off, he stopped, thinking for a few moments.
"What is it?" said Phra; "why don't you throw that nasty thing in to be swept out to sea?"
Sree gave him a peculiar look, and turned to Harry.
"Was it a very big crocodile, Sahib?" he said.
"Yes. Why?"
"Would you like to have a shot at it?"
"Of course; but these big ones are so cunning."
"Let's see," said the man. "Perhaps I could get you a shot."
The boys were interested at once.
"What are you going to do?" said Phra.
"See if I can bring one up where you can shoot."
"How?" asked Harry.
"Is there a big hook in the house?" said Sree.
"Do you want one?"
"Yes, Sahib."
"Go up, then, and tell Mike to give you one of the biggest meat-hooks.
Say I want it directly, and then he will."
The two men squatted down at the end of the landing-place, smiling, behind their vessels of water, as Sree hurried up the garden, while the two boys stood, gun in hand, scanning the surface of the river.
"He's going to make a bait of the snake, I suppose; but