MARTIN RATTLER. 57

duced a species of wild exasperation, which, he often
asserted, was very hard to bear. Searcely had he
resumed his work when a bat of enormous size
brushed past his nose so noiselessly that it seemed
more like a phantom than a reality. Barney had
never seen anything of the sort before, and a cold
perspiration broke out upon him when he fancied it
might be a ghost. Again the bat swept past close to
his eyes.

“Musha, but Tl kill ye, ghost or no ghost,” he
ejaculated, gazing all round into the gloomy depths
of the woods with his cutlass uplifted. Instead of
flying again in front of him, as he had expected, the
bat flew with a whirring noise past his ear. Down
came the cutlass with a sudden thwack, cutting deep
into the trunk of a small tree, which trembled under
the shock, and sent a shower of ripe nuts of a large
size down upon the sailor’s head. Startled as he was,
he sprang backward with a wild ery; then, half
ashamed of his groundless fears, he collected the
wood he had cut, threw it hastily on his shoulder,
and went with a quick step out of the woods. In
doing so he put his foot upon the head of a small
snake, which wriggled up round his ankle and leg.
If there was anything on earth that Barney abhorred

and dreaded it was a snake. No sooner did he feel