He scrutinized it.
The teeth in the monster’s jaws were three inches long.
Mr. Mole and Monday arrived on the scene just in time to see the snake sink to the bottom.
“Golly, Mast’ Harry!” exclaimed Monday; “you kill the jabber-wock.”
“It is St. George and the Dragon over again,” remarked Mole, “although I always had my doubts respecting that legend or myth.”
He cleared his voice.
This was a sure sign that he was going to deliver a short lecture.
“Of course,” he continued, “every country has its folk lore. St. Patrick chased snakes out of Ireland, so they say, but as a matter of dry natural history fact, snakes never existed there.”
“Don’t be an iconoclast, sir, and do away with all our traditions,” said Harry.
“Wait a bit,” replied the professor; “let us go back to ancient Rome, glorious still in its ruins. The Rome of the Cæsars, the via sacra, the Colisseum of Horace, Virgil, Maecenas; not the Rome of to-day with its emasculated Corso, its——”