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The creature lurks watchfully under cover of the water, and, whilst the unsuspecting animal is drinking, suddenly makes a dash at the nose, and with a grip of its back-raclining double range of teeth never fails to secure the terrified beast beyond the power of escape." It would appear that boas are apt to be carried out to sea by sudden floods, and are sometimes drifted alive on distant coasts.
The two last, though inferior in size to the boas, are more to be dreaded; and my horse springs back when he sees the one glistening through the grass, or hears the "skir-r-r-r" of the other threatening to strike. Quadrupeds and quadrumana appear. The jaguar is not far distant, "laired" in the secret depths of the impenetrable jungle.
Couples came next the men anxious-eyed, and usually walking two steps ahead of their companions; the women plainly flustered and hurried, and invariably buttoning gloves or gathering up trailing ends of scarfs or boas. The crowd was thickening fast, now, and Billy's eyes were alert. Children were appearing, and young women walking alone. One of these wore a bunch of violets.
The assistants carefully removed the great boas and pythons from the boxes, laying them on the floor, where they crawled lazily about, their delicate forked tongues vibrating like streaks of red flame, while Brandu removed a slat from a crate of rabbits and put a half-dozen of them on the floor.
"It belongs to the same family, but is known as the anaconda." "What is the difference between the boa constrictor and the python?" "The boas are the species found in the western hemisphere, whereas the pythons inhabit the eastern countries. The anaconda is a native of Brazil and some of the other South American countries.
"Oh, but you must have torches, and guns, and stand ready to fight against wild beasts as well as against men. There are jaguars in there, and boas serpents ten yards in length. Natives have been killed by jaguars within the month."
Here were mothers trying to collect their daughters, as a hen her chickens, and as in that case, the pursuit of one usually lost all the others; testy papas swearing, lovers leering, as they twisted the boas round the fair throats of their sweethearts; vows of love, mingling with lamentations for a lost slipper, or a stray mantle.
"Jaguars rarely come as far north as this," Ned said, "and your serpents are not dangerous," but the other insisted that there were both jaguars and boas in the jungle. "This man Gostel may have gone to the rescue of the boys," suggested Ned. Gastong laughed weakly. "You don't know him," he said. "I tell you he is a spy, a Japanese spy, watching every inch of the canal as it is excavated.
Some matrons who went about clad in furs amused him, for they must have been unpleasantly warm in their jackets and boas; nothing but the hope of being able to tell the customs inspector with a good conscience that the things had been worn, would have sustained one lady draped from head to foot in Astrakhan.
Were a bottleful of concentrated miasma, such as we inhale herein, collected, what a deadly poison, instantaneous in its action, undiscoverable in its properties, would it be! I think it would act quicker than chloroform, be as fatal as prussic acid. Horrors upon horrors are in it. Boas above our heads, snakes and scorpions under our feet.