rotten, weathered from lying around outside; but perhaps if the quality of the rope was not enough, then the quantity might do.
That's what Lassignac seemed to think. He was winding away with fervor, muttering and cursing under his breath.
I got up slowly and went over to gaze at Bonita. Just then she woke up. Recollection came swiftly to her. "What are you doing?" she demanded of Lassignac.
I could see that the latter was furious with her and with himself. The former because his friend Don Ramon was dead, the last because he was doing something that went against the grain, against the innate chivalry of his nation, and he hated himself for it. Under such circumstances a man is likely to go farther than he intends. So Lassignac.
"I am binding you," he snarled. "I will see you hanged, you female brute! You fiend, you arch-murderess!" he screamed. "Bah! Cochon!" And then he kicked her.
It was a beastly rotten thing to do. But as I said, under a strain a man may do things he would normally think impossible.
Bonita seemed to shiver for a moment. Then—it happened so quickly that I couldn't quite follow—she just seemed to bound from the ground, the ropes falling from her like so many broken threads. In the same upward motion she seized Lassignac and before we could prevent she hurled him with terrific force against a tree, where he crashed and lay inert.
She turned to the rest of us. Our guns had come up at once, I can tell you. No, we didn't shoot. At that I am not so sure that our bullets could have stopped her unless they tore her to pieces. That uncanny concentrated energy and demoniac strength needed more than bullets to stop.
But our bullets were not necessary.
She had thrown Lassignac with such force that the impact had shaken the tree. And there was something up there that was disturbed, and didn't like to be disturbed. As Bonita pivoted toward us, something like a rope, yellow and shiny, slithered down from above to her shoulder, hung there for a fraction of a second, and'dropped to the ground. From there it moved through the grass toward the jungle, not smoothly, but in a series of leaps and bounds much as a coiled bed-spring bounces when you throw it, and finally disappeared in the thickets.
None of us had seen it clearly, but we all knew what it was from the way it moved. It was that deadliest of South American snakes, the fer de lance, swiftest and most venomous of reptiles.
"I'm glad it didn't come this way," Arnheimer murmured, pale to his eyes.
Bonita had scarcely moved since the snake struck her. Already her eyes were filled with horror and fear. And scarcely half a minute later she began to writhe in the first paroxysm of pain. No, we could do nothing for her. She had been struck in the neck, close to the jugular vein, a direct path to the heart. She twisted and screamed in her agony. It was gruesome, and I almost felt sorry for her.
It didn't last long. Just a few minutes. Brrr! I shudder at the recollection. The discovery of the bodies of Connaughton and Don Ramon was terrible to us, and terrible, too, was the sight of Darrell's death. But most terrible is the memory of the woman, Bonita, rippling and heaving under the action of the poison.
"Well, it's over, thank God!" said
(Continued on page 575)
