"Well, that big leader he up and made a speech--not a oration like our gifted young friend here can make, but a few yaps and growls. After he had finished they give him a cheer, and fell to scooping a big trench round the tree. Then they gnawed the roots through. Then they boosted the tree down. Yes, gentlemen, them wild dogs which you would call unthinking critters, deliberately dug up that big tree with their teeth, so's to get hold o' me." "Hum! Did they eat you, Uncle?" "They boosted the tree down; but while they stood away off, I lit on my feet and were inside the house 'fore you could say Jack Robinson. Yes, that's so." CHAPTER TEN. THE BLACK MAMBA. We were talking about snakes at the little roadside _winkle_--a composite shop, where you could buy moist black sugar, tinned butter, imported; tinned milk, also imported; cotton, prints, boots, "square face," tobacco, dates, nails, gunpowder, cans, ribbons, tallow candles, and the "Family Herald." We always did talk about snakes when other topics failed, and no one had been fishing for some time, and the big pumpkin season had passed. "Man," said Lanky John, the ostrich farmer, "I killed a snake, a _ringhals_, yesterday morning back of the kraal, and in the evening when I went by there was a live _ringhals_ coiled round the dead one." "There's a lot of love among snakes," said Abe Pike, who had swapped a bush-buck hide for a pound of coffee and a roll of tobacco. "They don't talk much, but they think a lot, and you can't plumb the feelings of silent folk; they're that deep." "Ever been in love, Uncle?" asked Lanky John, popping a big lump of black sugar into his mouth. "I guess it won't take more'n a foot measure to get to the bottom of your feelings, tho' you are long enough to be a telegraft pole," snorted Uncle Abe. "Snakes haven't got any brain," said Lanky John, after an awkward pause. "No more has a whip-stick," said the old man, with a contemptuous glance at Lanky's long, thin limbs. "That's true," replied John, with a wink at us; "though I've heard of a snake that glued on to a whip-stick all for love of you, Uncle." "Snakes," said Abe, "knows when to speak and when to keep shut, which is more than some folk can do. If you come unexpected on a snake in a path, and he sees your foot coming down on him, he lets you know he's about, and that foot of yours is jest fixed in the air. Well, suppose that snake is not in the path, but jest stretched out 'longside, he don't call out. For why? 'Cos he knows it's safer for him and for you that he should keep quiet. I tell you there's not a man here who hasn't time and again passed in the dark within a few inches of a snake." A listener, who was seated in a dark corner, moved out into the sunshine. "Did I ever tell you that yarn about the black mamba?" "You never did, old man, so shove along."