Notes
The following is also very simple, and may be done in one paragraph of ten or twelve lines.
Make up your mind what the real subject of this paragraph should be; and notice that the colonel is not really of the slightest importance to the story—except that he tells it.
Don’t forget the title, beginning “Précis of …”.
No. 3.—The Cobra
“Talking of snakes,” said the colonel, pushing back his chair and lighting another cheroot, “reminds me of a curious incident that happened when I was stationed at Ghurrapore, in the early ’eighties. Ghurrapore was an infernal bad place for snakes, and the worst of the lot was the cobra or hooded snake. These cobras, or hooded snakes, turned up everywhere—in your bath, under the verandah, anywhere. Now, one day one of my officers, Lieutenant Simpson, went into the officers’ changing-room to get a pair of tennis shoes. There were a dozen pairs in a wooden box; and not seeing his own on the top he put his hand in to fish out the bottom ones. Now you must know that there had been a regular plague of cobras, or hooded snakes, in the lines, and we were all a bit panicky; so when Simpson suddenly felt something pricking him, and drew out his hand to find two drops of blood on his little finger, he at once concluded it was a cobra, or hooded snake.
“I was sitting in the club at the time drinking some of that excellent 7 star whisky—you remember it, Major? And when I saw young Simpson running across the compound holding his little finger, I at once said to myself, ‘That’s a hooded snake or cobra!’