The forest birds heard it afar off, and ceased their chatterings and warblings, so that there was no sound for some time save the continuous shrieks and ejaculations that came from Murtagh's lips.
Captain Redwood, altogether unarmed, leaped back into the pinnace to seize the boat-hook, thinking it the best weapon for the occasion.

It might have been of service if obtainable in time.

But long before he could have returned with it the ship-carpenter's ribs would have been compressed into a mass of broken bones, and the breath crushed out of his body.
This would certainly have been the lamentable result but for a weapon with which a Malay is always armed, carrying it on his body nearer than his shirt, and almost as near as his skin.

It was the _kris_.

As a matter of course, Saloo had one, and luckily for his old shipmate, "Multa," he knew how to handle it with skill, so that, in driving its twisted blade through the python's throat, he did not also impale upon its point the jugular vein of the Irishman.