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For a long time after old Joe Gurney had terminated his visit Cappy Ricks sat in the position which with him always denoted intense mental concentration. He had sunk low in his swivel chair and swung his old legs to the top of his desk; his head was bowed on his breast and his eyes were closed. Suddenly he started as if snake-bitten, sat up at his desk and reached for the telephone.
It was the old sailor who had so manfully resisted the orders of Nosey, and insisted upon allowing me to administer consolation to the snake-bitten bushranger. "Here is a man who must be taken care of, if I go without shelter," I said, pointing to the sailor. "It is impossible," Murden replied. "He is badly wounded, and would occupy the room of three or four men.
"All time, yo' sleepum," he said, in the sonorous, oracular tone which he usually employed when a subject held his serious thought. "Peaceful Hart, him all same sleepum. All same sleepum 'longside snake. No seeum snake, no thinkum mebbyso catchum bite." He glanced down at his own snake-bitten foot. "Snake bite, make all time much hurt."
"Hell's bells and panther-tracks!" Mayor Poundstone started as if snake-bitten. "I should say you have hooked a big fish. Boy, you've landed a whale!" And the Mayor whistled softly in his amazement and delight. "By golly, to think of you getting in with that bunch! Tremendyous! Per-fect-ly tree-mend-yous! Did Ogilvy say anything about future business?" "He did.
He lay in a small open space on the grass, with his basket bottom upward at his side, and all the berries scattered on the ground. "What is the matter?" asked Glenn. "Oh, I'm snake-bitten! I'm a dead man! I'm dying!" cried he, piteously. "That's a fib," said Sneak, "bekaise a dead man can't be a dying."
"Water," he cried; "for the love of mercy, give me a drink of water; I feel as though I was burning to death. My mouth is parched, and my tongue swollen to an unnatural size." "Give him a drink, one of you," grunted the chief. "It's probably the last one he will ever ask for." "Don't say that," exclaimed the snake-bitten man, struggling to rise. "I am not going to die just yet, I can tell you.
We didn't know what to do, but the dog did; he wouldn't let any one touch him, but went off to a slough back of the house and lay down in the mud, and he kept his head in the mud for two or three days. He got well all right. Your foot cannot be any worse than if you had been snake-bitten, surely, and you and I ought to have as much sense as the dog.
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