At length the dawn arrived, day broke, the sun rose, and a few of the savages, taking their bows and arrows, went off into the bush to forage, as I surmised; and a little later they returned, one after the other, each bringing some contribution to the common larder, while others busied themselves in collecting fresh wood and rebuilding the fire. While they were thus engaged, one of the party, who happened to pass near the spot where I had been bitten, suddenly uttered a most dreadful yell, grasped his left foot, looked at it a moment, and then began with furious haste to search about in the long grass, which he pushed apart with the blade of his spear.  A few seconds later he fell to stabbing the ground, as it seemed, savagely, finally stooping down and picking up the still writhing halves of a snake that had been cut clean in two by a blow of his spear.  It was not at all a formidable-looking creature, being not more than eighteen inches long and perhaps three inches girth about the thickest part of its body.  But it was an ugly, repulsive- looking brute, its head being heart-shaped, and its body almost the same thickness for the greater part of its length, terminating in a short, blunt tail.  Its ground colour was a dirty grey, upon which occurred large, irregular blotches or markings of dull black with a few splashes of brilliant red here and there.  The fellow who had fallen upon it with such ferocity, and who had evidently been bitten by it, brought the two writhing fragments and flung them into the fire, in the midst of which they writhed still more horribly.  Then seizing a good, stout, brightly- glowing brand from the fire, he coolly sat down and applied the almost white-hot end to the wound, which was in his left instep.  I do not think I ever saw anything more heroic than this act of the savage, for though the flesh hissed and smoked and gave forth a most horrible odour of burnt flesh, the man never winced, but calmly and deliberately cauterised the bite with as much care and thoroughness as though he had been operating upon somebody else.  But that he was not insensible to his self-inflicted torture was very evident from the fact that in a few seconds he was literally drenched with the perspiration that started from every pore of his body.