Some time later the python was beguiled by the music into raising its head inside one of the nooses, which a native, who was on the watch while Gambrino played, instantly jerked tight.
What followed was exciting. The reptile resented the trick with vigor, and showed itself possessed of far more strength than they had expected.
The rope had been made fast to a beam inside, and the snake nearly pulled the entire structure down, making it rock and creak in a way that caused Gambrino and his native ally to leap to the ground in haste from a back entrance. The reptile coiled its body about the posts and pulled desperately to break away. Altogether, it was a wild night at this little remote telegraph station.
The next morning a crowd of natives collected; and as the python had by this time exhausted itself, they contrived to hoist its head as high as the roof of the hut and to secure its tail.
It was then lowered into a molasses hogshead, which was covered over and trussed up securely with ropes.
In this condition the python was drawn to Padang on a bullock cart. It is said to weigh more than four hundred pounds.
[ON THE ROAD TO MANDALAY.]
All of us who were singing "On the Road to Mandalay" a few years ago—and there were mighty few of us who let it alone vocally—will be a bit surprised to be informed that Rangoon, where the dawn comes up like thunder and other interesting things happen, looks to the approaching tourist like an up-to-date American business centre.
In fact, according to a writer, the capital of Burma has many American towns beat a mile in the civic improvement line. "Its electric-lighted highways, all broad, neatly paved and well drained; its brilliantly illuminated boulevards, with rows of graceful, well-trimmed trees bordering both sides; its blocks of buildings, all laid out after a carefully considered plan, showing little of architectural beauty but much of austere regularity, astonish the stranger.