26 Idle Days in Patagonta. 
Not until the sun was an hour up did my friend 
return to me to find me hopeful still, and with all 
my faculties about me, but unable to move without 
assistance. Putting his arms around me he helped 
me up, and just as I had got erect on my sound leg, 
leaning heavily on him, out from beneath the 
poncho lying at my feet glided a large serpent of 
a venomous kind, the Craspedocephalus alternatus, 
called in the vernacular the serpent with a cross. 
Had my friend’s arms not been occupied with sus- 
taining me he, no doubt, would have attacked it with 
the first weapon that offered, and in all probability 
Serpent with a Cross. 
killed it, with the result that I should have suffered 
from a kind of vicarious remorse ever after. For- 
tunately it was not long in drawing its coils out of 
sight and danger into a hole in the wall. My 
hospitality had been unconscious, nor, until that 
moment, had I known that something had touched 
me, and that virtue had gone out from me; but I 
rejoice to think that the secret deadly creature, 
after lyg all might with me, warming its chilly 
blood with my warmth, went back unbruised to its 
den. 
