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I came panting up to breathe, my face lifted barely above the surface, dashing the water from my eyes, and casting one swift glance backward toward the landing. The high stern of the Adventurer was already some considerable distance away, exhibiting no sign of movement along her after-decks, but with that snake-like line of men still pouring over the crest of the bank, and disappearing forward.
They had been toughened by the rough-and-tumble of their strange experiences, and inured to the brooding silence and dark avenues of the forest; but they entered into a scene that tried their nerves. The trees closed in as they advanced, and very soon they entered a leafy tunnel, lit up by a faint light that barely showed up the slimy banks, covered by a network of snake-like roots.
There was no time to lose, she told herself feverishly, and moved forward with snake-like stillness. Between the sheltering arm and the neck of the steel shirt there was a space of naked throat. Setting her teeth, she raised her knife and struck down at it with a strong hand. The point never reached its mark. For an instant she could not tell what had happened.
In youth, the colouring of the female is ashy green, almost exactly the tint of the most common of arboreal snakes, and at the time of life when it is less able to defend itself it seems to spend all its days in the snake-like posture.
When these parasites are withdrawn from the circulation and placed on a slide for study they are seen to be minute transparent, colorless, snake-like organisms inclosed in a very delicate sack or sheath. They are but a little more than one-hundredth of an inch long and about as big around as a red blood-corpuscle.
While digging, we came upon a snake-like creature about a foot long. Directly Duppo saw it he entreated us not to touch it, as it was fearfully poisonous, and called it the mother of the saubas. We, however, knew it to be perfectly harmless. He declared that it had a head at each end of its body. We convinced him, however, that he was wrong, by showing him the head and tail.
So intense has the rifle-fire been around the Su Wang-fu and the French Legation lines, that high above the deafening roar of battle a distinct and ominous snake-like hissing can be heard a hiss, hiss, hiss, that never ceases.
I was sitting very still, some distance to one side, and he did not see me. Near old Noel's deadfall he paused an instant with raised head, in the curious snake-like attitude that all the weasels take when watching. Then he glided round the end of the trap, and disappeared down the portage. When he was gone I stole out to examine his tracks.
Although this form of defence had been badly knocked about by shell-fire there was still sufficient wire, either in tension or else in snake-like coils, to offer serious impediment to the advance. Suddenly the opening shot of a ragged, ill-aimed fusillade burst from a line of zig-zagged trenches a hundred yards from the edge of the plateau.
If it had a fault it was this, that it had in it too much of movement. There were some who said that she was almost snake-like in her rapid bendings and the almost too easy gestures of her body; for she was much given to action, and to the expression of her thought by the motion of her limbs.
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