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"The world," observed Malcourt, using his favourite quotation, "is so full of a number of things like you and me and that coral snake yonder.... It's very hard to make a coral snake bite you; but it's death if you succeed.... Whack that nag if he plunges! Lord, what a nose for sarpints horses have!
The private remarked once on this point "Sarpints alive! the heels of the one and the law of the other is the love of them. They'll weather together like the Divil and Death." The Sergeant was brooding; that was not like him. He was hesitating; that was less like him.
We will not drag the reader through every step of the rough and adventurous journey which was accomplished by our travellers in the succeeding week, during which they became so familiar with tigers, that Muggins thought no more of their roaring than he did of the mewing of cats, while Larry actually got the length of kicking the "sarpints" out of his way, although he did express his conviction, now and then, that the "counthry wos mightily in want of a visit from Saint Patrick."
Then we took to the boats, and saved a few bales of silk by way of sample of her cargo, and got ashore; and she'd have come ashore too next tide and told tales, but somebody left a keg of gunpowder in the cabin, with a long fuse, and blew a hole in her old ribs, that the water came in, and down she went, hissing like ten thousand sarpints, and nobody the wiser."
"But what is there to be afraid of, Tom?" "Sarpints, sir!" "Pooh, Tom! We can shoot them, eh? even if they are a hundred feet long! Well, what else?" Tom grinned before he spoke. "Jaggers, sir!" "Seldom out except of a night, Tom." "Fevers, sir!" "Only in the low river-side parts, Tom. We're hundreds of feet above the river here." "Snakes in the grass, sir!" "Pooh, Tom!
The place, full of its litter of odds and ends dear to the young naturalist, and with its open windows, lay open to the gaze of the soldiers, and the sergeant, after a sharp look round, which satisfied him that the place was empty, turned to Waller. "I thought it meant game, sir," he said. "Where's your sarpints?" "Yonder on the shelf," said Waller, with a mischievous look in his eyes. "Yah!
He turned to the Indian: "Someone lives there"? he said. "It is the home of the dead, but life is also there." "White man, or Indian?" But no reply came. The Indian pointed instead to the buffalo rumbling down the valley. Trafford forgot the smoke, forgot everything except that splendid quarry. Shon was excited. "Sarpints alive," he said, "look at the troops of thim!
And what is ales but sarpints, my Lady?" said Mrs. Fry throwing out her hands, "and what makes the man so friendly with sarpints, that he must come to save mun? We know, do you and I, my Lady, who is the old sarpint and the father of sarpints. And then what was he doing with that strange baste on his shoulder, my Lady?" "Why, it was only a tame squirrel," said Lady Eleanor.
"Cur'ous thing," remarked Joe, as he struck a light by means of flint, steel, and tinder-box, "curious thing that we're made to need sich a lot o' grub. If we could only get on like the sarpints, now, wot can breakfast on a rabbit, and then wait a month or two for dinner! Ain't it cur'ous?" Dick admitted that it was, and stooped to blow the fire into a blaze.
"We ain't doin' nothin', Josey!" said Buggins, almost timidly. "Nor we ain't sayin' nothin'," added Bainton. "We be as harmless as doves," put in Adam Frost with a sly chuckle; "and we ain't no match for sarpints!" "Ain't you looking well, Mr. Letherbarrow!" ejaculated the smartly dressed barmaid; "Just wonderful for your time of life!" "My time o' life?"
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