Mew VIII.
Terrible Adventure with a hairy Snake.
Blinks’s ma lived away in a corner, on a rug of large dimensions; and he had a very long way to walk over the trackless plain, over the pathless desert, over the bounding prairie; and night too was beginning to creep down, and Blinks thought he could perceive enemies lurking in every corner, and monsters hiding in every shade; so that, had he been anything less than Blinks, he would certainly have thought it worth while being afraid; but being Blinks, he marched bravely on, only just by way of caution he gave an occasional glance over his right shoulder, then one over his left, then one behind, all the while keeping a sharp look-out ahead. Happening to look round, to his astonishment he beheld something like a snake, with its head reared high in the air, apparently following his every footstep. This caused Blinks to quicken his pace. He soon looked round again. The creature, whatever it was, was still there, waving its head from side to side, and evidently looking at Blinks with all its might; although never an eye it had at all that he could see.
“Then,” thinks Blinks, “I’ll spring smartly round and seize it.”
No sooner said than done; and brave Blinks jumped suddenly about and attempted to catch the snake—which was twice as tall as himself and covered with hair—by the throat. But the creature was too wide-awake, and when Blinks turned round, so did it. So round and round spun Blinks, and round and round went the hairy serpent, and always kept directly in our hero’s rear,—when he stopped it stopped, and when he went round again it went round again. At long last poor Blinks began to feel dizzy; but he was much too brave to think of giving in, till, finally, he tumbled on his back, and then the snake peeped up between his hind legs,—that is, Blinks’s hind-legs; for serpents never have hind-legs, by any chance.
“Ho! ho!” says Blinks, “Mr. Sea-snake, I’ll have ye now, without any more going about the bush.” So saying, he caught the creature by the end, just where his eyes would have been had he had any,—he caught it, and bit it; and as he did so, Blinks himself uttered a sharp cry of pain, and bit the snake again, and then cried again, and licked the part of the snake he had bitten tenderly with his tongue; this went on with great vigour for a length of time. At last Blinks desisted, and—
“Well, I’m jiggered,” says he, “if it isn’t a part of myself I’ve been a-running from, and a-fighting with, and a-chewing at, all the time. How provoking! and I don’t know any bad words, else wouldn’t I swear! Memo: to make my ma teach me to say bad words.”
“Bravo! Brr—r—ravo!” cried pretty Dick, who, perched on a stool, had been watching all the performance with singular interest.
“Bravo yourself,” cried Blinks, indignantly; but he felt very foolish nevertheless.
And that was how Blinks came to the knowledge that he possessed, that very useful and ornamental appendage called a tail; and that extremity was ever afterwards viewed by him with great interest, and treated with the utmost respect,—Blinks conducting himself with conscious pride and dignity, as behoves an animal of the feline persuasion who is possessed of two eyes, and is followed about, wherever he goes, by a living, moving, gracefully-waving tail.