Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/91

Rh coil twice round his waist and his legs. It was too weak and its neck too tightly tied to permit it to exercise its strength, or else it could have crushed him. As it was, he said it was a horrid sensation, and I can believe it. Neither Mack nor I offered to relieve him of it! He carried it like this the rest of the day. Once when the Captain lay down to drink out of a pool the snake at the end of the wand drank also! We gathered up our orchids again; I threw many round my hat, where they clung on, and had scores of beautiful blossoms trailing over my shoulders, as we needed our hands for climbing. I have never seen a more extraordinary picture than the Captain, with this brute coiled round him, standing on a pinnacle of rock and we orchid-laden people beside him.

Then our thoughts recurred to the blacks, as we could hear that many were quite near, following us though invisible! They must have witnessed this scene, and I wonder what they thought of it! What could we possibly be going to do with the snake alive? They would have killed and eaten it.

Mack, who had climbed up ahead, suddenly returned to say that there was a clearing, with their gunyahs (bark huts) and fires burning. So the Captain ordered an instant retreat, as he became suddenly awake to the danger. Had these been friendly blacks they would have been out assisting us; the mere fact of their remaining concealed and tracking us showed they were to be avoided. Also, just at this time they were most troublesome; about Mount Cook, and we were there, miles from any one, at their mercy.

As we got lower down, scrambling and falling through the mass of vegetation, I sometimes came on the Captain's back, and each time I touched the clammy folds of that snake I got a shock. I