Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 22, 2025
The yell of triumph was yet resounding over the square, and awakening responsive echoes among the surrounding hills, when the explosion of at least fifty rifles, sharp, rattling, and deadly, like the war-note of the rattle-snake, followed by a mighty hurrah of Christian voices, and the galloping of horse into the village from above, converted the whole scene into one of amazement and terror.
But when, two years afterwards, my eye fell by accident upon the name of Sobieski in one of the public papers, I could not withdraw it; my sight was fascinated as if by a rattle-snake. In one column I read how bravely the palatine fell, and in the next the dreadful fate of his daughter.
'F-o-o-rard! was again the cry. 'Hang it. Jack, exclaimed Lord Scamperdale, laying his hand on his double's shoulder, as they galloped alongside of each other, 'Hang it, Jack, see if you can't sarve out this unrighteous, mahogany-booted, rattle-snake. Do if you die for it!
They pursued their journey quite pleasantly and safely enough, but, on their arrival at the Greenhorn River, the scene of the German's adventure with a rattle-snake, they were obliged to be very wary in their progress, for Kit had learned that the Apache Indians were out on the warpath, and were waylaying the road which, he intended to pursue with the avowed purpose of attacking, plundering and murdering whoever chanced to fall in their savage clutches.
At a glance, I perceived that my foot was on the body of a large rattle-snake, with his head just forcing itself from under my heel. Thus taken by surprise, I stood motionless and with my heart throbbing. The reptile worked itself free, and twisting round my leg, almost in a second bit me two or three times.
Perceiving that I had no intention of giving him fair play by coming within his reach, he suddenly uncoiled and glid across a log, thinking to make good his retreat; but being determined on having not his scalp, for the head of a rattle-snake is rather a dangerous toy but his rattle, I pursued him across the log.
At first he thought it was that of a rattle-snake, and involuntarily tried to look about his feet. They were nearly invisible in the gloom of the grave.
'I know nothing of him, I repeated; 'not even his name; and I have not, as I told you, seen him in the course of my whole life, till a few weeks since. 'Will you swear to that? said the singular man, who seemed to await the result of this debate, secure as a rattle-snake is of the prey which has once felt its fascination.
The head upon its lithe, round neck was poised motionless, but set as with a hair-spring. The flat, pointed face was turned upon me, so that I could see a patch of white upon the throat. Evidently the snake had just sloughed an old skin, for the sunlight gleamed iridescent on the shining jet scales. It was not a large head; it lacked the shovel-nose and the heavy, horrid jaws of the rattle-snake.
The common black snake, whose bite is perfectly innoxious, and the copper-head, have also a deadly enmity towards the rattle-snake, which, when they meet it, they never fail to attack. The next ridge of mountains is called the "laurel hills," which are covered with an immense growth of different species of laurel.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking