Then that brave fellow Hans lit the lantern and said: "Do you stop here, Baases, while I go to look.

If you hear anything happen to me, you will have time to run away," words that made me feel somewhat ashamed of myself.
However, knowing that he was quick as a weasel and silent as a cat, we let him go.

A minute or two later suddenly he reappeared out of the darkness, for he had turned the metal shield over the bull's-eye of the lantern, and even in that light I could see that he was grinning.
"It is all right, Baas," he said.

"The Father of Serpents has really gone to that land whither he sent Bena, where no doubt he is now roasting in the fires of hell, and I don't see any others.

Come and look at him." So in we went and there, true enough, upon the floor of the cave lay the huge reptile stone dead and already much swollen.