With a cry of rage he struck at the serpent with the bird, and struck and struck again, blindly, still giving utterance to that odd sound, and with the fury of a young demon.

The woman had reached the bank and stood, unknowing what to do, shrieking in maternal terror, while across the clearing a man was running.

And then a fierce chance blow, delivered with all the strength of the maddened boy, alighted fairly, just below the head of the snake carrying away the bird, and in a second it was done for, floating, writhing down the stream with a broken neck, and its tiny prey loosened and drifting away beside it.
The mother gasped in relief, but only for a moment.

The boy cast one glance at the floating reptile and the bird, and only one, then turned to the other serpent.

It had almost reached the shore, and between that and the covert it might attain was a stretch of shrubless ground.
Already its black length was defined on the short grass when the boy rushed from the water with uplifted club, just as his father came in full view of the scene from the other side.