Then The Feeling Of Pressure
Increased And Was Very Curious And Was As If I Had A Heavy Object Like
A crowbar lying across my foot, and at length I looked down at my
feet, and to my amazement and
Horror spied the great black snake
slowly drawing his long coil across my instep! I dared not move, but
gazed down fascinated with the sight of that glistening black
cylindrical body drawn so slowly over my foot. He had come out of the
moat, which was riddled at the sides with rat-holes, and had most
probably been there hunting for rats when my wandering footsteps
disturbed him and sent him home to his den; and making straight for
it, as his way was, he came to my foot, and instead of going round
drew himself over it. After the first spasm of terror I knew I was
perfectly safe, that he would not turn upon me so long as I remained
quiescent, and would presently be gone from sight. And that was my
last sight of him; in vain I watched and waited for him to appear on
many subsequent days: but that last encounter had left in me a sense
of a mysterious being, dangerous on occasion as when attacked or
insulted, and able in some cases to inflict death with a sudden blow,
but harmless and even friendly or beneficent towards those who
regarded it with kindly and reverent feelings in place of hatred. It
is in part the feeling of the Hindoo with regard to the cobra which
inhabits his house and may one day accidently cause his death, but is
not to be persecuted.
Possibly something of that feeling about serpents has survived in me;
but in time, as my curiosity about all wild creatures grew, as I
looked more on them with the naturalist's eyes, the mystery of the
large black snake pressed for an answer. It seemed impossible to
believe that any species of snake of large size and black as jet or
anthracite coal in colour could exist in any inhabited country without
being known, yet no person I interrogated on the subject had ever seen
or heard of such an ophidian. The only conclusion appeared to be that
this snake was the sole one of its kind in the land. Eventually I
heard of the phenomenon of melanism in animals, less rare in snakes
perhaps than in animals of other classes, and I was satisfied that the
problem was partly solved. My serpent was a black individual of a
species of some other colour. But it was not one of our common
species-not one of those I knew. It was not a thick blunt-bodied
serpent like our venomous pit-viper, our largest snake, and though in
shape it conformed to our two common harmless species it was twice as
big as the biggest specimens I had ever seen of them. Then I recalled
that two years before my discovery of the black snake, our house had
been visited by a large unknown snake which measured two or three
inches over six feet and was similar in form to my black serpent.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 124 of 186
Words from 65424 to 65955
of 98444
