'You're wasting your time, boss!' grunted Ruffy with all eptance of
violent death, 'the calm African in him, fresh This boy's a goner.
That's no horse! That's snake juice mixed. He's finished.'
'Are You sure, Ruffy!' Bruce looked up, 'Are you sure it's snake venom?'
'That's what they use. They mix it with kassava meal.'
'Hendry, where's the snake bite outfit!'
'It's in the medicine box back at the camp.' Bruce tugged once more at
the arrowhead and it came away, leaving a deep black hole between the
man's shoulder blades.
'Everybody into the trucks, we've got to get him back.
Every second is vital.'
'Look at his eyes,' grunted Ruffy. 'That injection stuff ain't going to
help him much.' The pupils had
contracted to the size of match heads and he was shaking uncontrollably
as the poison spread through his body.
'Get him into the truck.' They lifted him into the cab and everybody
scrambled aboard. Ruffy started the engine, slammed into reverse and the
motor roared as he shot backwards over the intervening thirty yards to
the laager.
take him out,' instructed Bruce. 'Bring him into the 'shelter.'
The man was blubbering through slack lips and he had started to sweat.
Little rivulets of it coursed down his face and naked upper body.
There was hardly any blood from the wound, just a trickle of brownish
fluid. The poison must be a coagulant, Bruce decided.
'Bruce, are you all right?' Shermaine ran to meet him.
'Nothing wrong with me.' Bruce remembered to check his tongue this time.
'But one of them has been hit.'
'Can I help you?'
'No, I don't want you to watch.' And he turned from her. 'Hendry,
where's that bloody snake bite outfit?' he shouted.
They had dragged the man on a blanket into the laager and laid him in
the shade. Bruce went to him and knelt beside him. He took the scarlet
tin that Hendry handed him and opened it.
ruffy, get those two trucks worked into the circle and make sure your
boys are on their toes. With this success they may get brave sooner than
you expected.'
as Bruce fitted the hypodermic needle on to the syringe he spoke.
'Hendry, get them to rig some sort of screen round us.
'You can use blankets.' With his thumb he snapped the top off the
ampoule and filled the syringe with the pale yellow serum.
'Hold him,' he said to the two gendarmes, lifted a pinch of skin close
beside the wound and ran the needle under it.
The man's skin felt like that of a frog, damp and clammy. As he expelled
the serum Bruce was trying to calculate the time that had elapsed since
the arrow had hit. Possibly seven or eight minutes, mamba venom kills in
fourteen minutes.
'Roll him over,' he said.
The man's head lolled sideways, his breathing was quick and shallow and
the saliva poured from the corners of his mouth, running down his
