From these distant bayous and lagoons now issued three or four or five sinuous monsters, rushing forward upon the waves of their own disturbance, their saurian heads raised slightly, and the huge convolutions of their tails discerned in the wash of their wakes, as they hastened, as if with some anticipatory avidity for their meal, towards us, towards the platform, from where the immolation awaited them. They were the Crocodilo-Pythons. We recognized at once the white-green beasts we had seen in the Saurian Sea. Yes, the same obscene, unspeakable beasts.
They only revealed their terrifying bulk as they approached the platform and finally came to rest before it. Then inserting their muscular posteriors in the mud, beyond which lazily rolled the python-like tails in portentous folds, their heads and fore-quarters slowly rose into the air. This exposure made us quail and yet exult, with an excitement no language can convey. The same repulsive coloring masked them, the greenish-yellow skin, the agitated and red blotches. Higher and higher, mounted the snapping jaws, and at moments the mucus covered eyes emerged with a baleful glitter; the long neck swayed and the short front legs beat the air, as if in expostulation at delay. The fascinating thrill of horror which such a sight causes can be understood; only the painter can justify it.
And, sir, they were fed—fed with corpses, while the infernal cymbals banged on, and the insignificant people wailed their “Lam-bo-oo, Lam-bo-oo!”
The bodies were naked and they were the dead of both races; the gaping jaws caught them as the sea lion catches with inerrant skill the tossed fish, that no sooner reaches the expectant jaws than it vanishes with a hollow-sounding gulp. So for the most part did these small bodies go, the dilating necks of the animals marking their descent to the cavernous abdomens. A few vicious twirls maybe, a shivering hammering together of the jaws, accompanied at times with a dip beneath the water, sending muddy waves to the banks, indicated the less easy negotiation of the larger bodies.
Revolted and overcome by the pervading half-sickening stench—in part the exhalations from the vile saurians—we turned away. As we went back I caught a full view of the little dignitaries in their violet gowns, their glittering chains and their beehive hats, and what an incongruous contrast it made. In their frailness, their whiteness, their chirping volubility, with their overmade heads, their tenuous shanks and their globed eyes they took on, to me, the whimsical likeness to delicately cut and animated netsukes in ivory, dressed like toys; and I thought too their enlarged heads might keep company with their compressed hearts, though certainly we could not say yet, and religious habits often accompany many horrors, much bad taste, and a lot of antiquated humbug.
THE POOL OF OBLATION
We got away, the Professor reluctantly. He said the “mandibular action” merited longer observation, and Hopkins inquired, “I wonder how the undertakers of Radiumopolis relish this sort of burial? It certainly saves the mourner considerable in flowers and gravestones, but I don’t believe I would cotton to finding my ancestors in the bones of an alligator. It’s decidedly composite you know, like as in “The Yarn of the Nancy Bell,” when the man who had eaten a good deal of everybody, sang:
“‘Oh, I am the cook and a captain bold,
And the mate of the Nancy brig,