"You may thank your stars there's no mambas down in this country, for of all critturs that crawl, or fly, or walk, there's not one for nateral cussedness and steady hate to come up to a black mamba. Why! thunder! if there was a mamba in these parts, and he'd a grudge against me, I'd move off a hundred miles to where my sister 'Liza lives." "A hundred miles! That's a good step." "Maybe it wouldn't be fur enough neither. You wait! Ten years ago I was riding goods to the Diamond Fields, and after one trip I was starting back with the empty wagon, there being no produce to load up with, when a chap came up and offered three guineas for his passage. Well, a man's wagon is his home, and you don't want to give a fellow the run of your tent for a month without knowing something about him. So I jes' looked him all over--saw that his boots were worn out, and that he kep' looking over his shoulder, when he climbed into the wagon and drew the blanket over him--though the sun was fierce enough to light your pipe. He gave me sich a look when he went in that I had not the heart to drag him out, and off I trekked. He didn't join me at the fire that night, and when I climbed in, thinking he was asleep, he was shiverin' as though he had the ague. Well, I gave him a glass of Cango and went to sleep. At sunrise I trekked again, and bymby I see him draw the canvas aside and look back over the veld, which was as flat as the palm of my hand. Thinks I, he's expecting the police, but I let him be, and at dinner he came out, looking as skeered as a monkey with a candle. First he took a walk round the wagon, then he shaded his eyes as he glanced over the veld, then he took a bite and a look, then a sip and a look. "`What are you looking for?' says I. "He let the beaker fall out of his hands and turned white. "`Have you seen it?' he whispered, with a sort of choke. "`Seen what?' I said. "`I don't feel well,' he answered, with a twitch for a smile, and climbed back into the wagon. "I tell you his looks made me feel queer, and I slept that night under the wagon. Well, I made a long skoff the next day, crossed the Modder River, and no sooner'd we get across than the river came down with a rush, brimming full with a boiling yeller flood right up to the lip of the steep banks. That coon spent the whole day on the bank watching the other side, and fixing his eyes on every tree and branch that went sailing down. "`It's a grand flood,' he said, rubbing his hands together; `'twould sweep a whale away like a piece of straw.' "`Yes, and a policeman too, eh?' said I, looking at him hard. "He noticed the meaning in my words, and a human smile broke over his face, chasing away the worried look that seemed carved into it. `Policeman,' he said. `I've no cause to fear a policeman, or any man. Good God!' he cried, catching me by the arm, `what's that?' "`Where?' said I, fit to jump out of my skin for the terror in his face.