As a general rule Gambrino has little enough to do, except listen to the monotonous ticking of the instrument. For solace and company, therefore, he frequently had recourse to his violin.
Thatched houses on posts in Sumatra are not commonly supplied with glass windows; but Gambrino had afforded himself the luxury of a two-pane sash, set to slide in an aperture in the side wall of his hut, and some five or six months ago, during the wet season, he was sitting at this window one afternoon, as he played his violin, when he saw the head of a large serpent rise out of the high grass, at a distance of seventy or eighty yards.
His first impulse was to get his carbine and try to shoot the monster, for he saw that it was a very large python, and not a desirable neighbor. But something in the attitude of the reptile led him to surmise that it had raised itself to hear the violin, and he passed at once to a lively air.
As long as he continued playing the python remained there, apparently motionless; but when he ceased it drew its head down, and he saw nothing more of it that day, although he went out with his gun to look for it.
Nearly a fortnight passed, and the incident had gone from his mind—for large snakes are not uncommon in Sumatra—when one night, as he was playing the violin to some native acquaintances who had come to the hut, they heard the sounds made by a large snake sliding across the bamboo platform or floor of the little veranda. On looking out with a light, one of the party saw a huge mottled python gliding away.
But it was not until the reptile appeared a third time, raising its head near his window, that the telegrapher became certain that it was really his violin which attracted it.
In the meantime the operator at Padang, with whom Gambrino held daily conversations by wire, had told him that the German agent of a Hamburg house at that port would pay ten pounds, English money, for such a python as he described.
Gambrino began scheming to capture the reptile. In one of the huts at the station there was stored a quantity of fibre rope, such as is used in Sumatra for bridging small rivers and ravines.
Gambrino contrived three large nooses from this rope, which he elevated horizontally, on bamboo poles, to the height of his window, and carried the drawing ends of the nooses inside the hut.
This was done after the operator had ascertained that at times the snake would come about the house and raise its head as if it heard the violin.