Cooking in a bamboo saucepan.
p. [72].
As a rule none of these snakes will assail a person unless they have been molested. They remain either rolled up close to a tree or lazily swinging from one of its branches, keeping hold of it with its powerful tail and so it is necessary to proceed very carefully and to look attentively both up and down in order not to disturb them.
The serpent, when stumbled against, hurls itself as quick as lightning upon the unhappy offender, encircling and suffocating him with its coils and biting him with its sharp fangs even when they are not poisoned. Like all other animals it becomes ferocious and seeks to kill from fear. He who disturbs it is a foe to be vanquished.
But if you pass him without being afraid and without hurrying, with a slow gliding step, taking care not to move your hands or arms, it will let you go on your way and take no notice of you.
And this I can affirm from experiments I have myself made upon the terrible sendok.
One day I was able, in this way, to pass quite close, almost touching one of these most venomous reptiles. He never moved as I crept by but he did not lose sight of me for a single instant. I am quite sure that if my inward fear had betrayed itself by the slightest gesture, I should have been a dead man.
Sometimes I have succeeded, very, very gently, in placing upon it a stick about two metres long. Well, the horrid serpent just lazily unfolded its coils and softly slipped from under it. Very different would have been the result if I had put the stick upon its head roughly!
From this you will see that danger from snakes is much less than one might believe from the thrilling adventures narrated by friends (between a roast chestnut and a sip of wine), as they are snugly gathered round a cosy fireside, adventures which they have read in the fabulous pages written by one of those story-tellers who gull the respectable public with the loveliest or the most terrifying descriptions of places, men and beasts of which they scarcely know the name.
Serpents are always attacked and beaten down with sticks, except the very large ones, that are taken by lassoes as I will explain in another chapter. It is a quick and simple means of getting free, in a few minutes, of a venomous enemy which it never fails to do when fear does not make the eye and the hand miss its aim, precision in the blow being all that is needed.