"If you want a good story of an adventure with a snake," said Frank, "let me tell you of Colonel Long's experience as he narrates it."
Fred agreed to be a good listener, and so Frank settled into his chair and began the thrilling tale:
COLONEL LONG'S GREAT SNAKE.
"Colonel Long says he was one day seated in his camp at Foueira, near the borders of the Albert N'yanzi, when he saw several men approaching with what he at first supposed was the trunk of a tree. It proved to be a large boa-constrictor, or python, which had just been killed close to the hut where he slept at night. It measured thirty feet in length, and in diameter was the size of a child. One of his men had said that a huge snake came every night to suck the cows in the camp; but the colonel had taken the narrative as an apocryphal 'snake-story' and given it no attention. The night before, his men were seated around the fire in the hut next his own, and suddenly fled in terror at the sight of an enormous head looking at them from an opening in the wall of the hut, and at the same time countless small serpents were gliding at their feet.
"The cause was now apparent, the colonel says: the boa had laid its eggs on the outer wall of the hut, where they were hatched by the heat of the atmosphere, and the mother had come there to meet them at the time of their hatching. A strict and somewhat nervous watch was kept through the night, but without any result. The next morning the snake was intercepted while looking for its young, and despatched with several charges of shot in its head and body. Colonel Long says that after that incident he went to bed every night with the thought of the possibility of being strangled in his sleep by one of these horrible visitors. Luckily for him, and for us, there was no intimate friend of her snakeship to pay him a call and seek revenge for her death."
Fred asked if the bite of the python was poisonous. Doctor Bronson explained that the python belonged to the family of constrictors, like the black snake of New England, and its bite was harmless. "It seizes its prey with its mouth," said the Doctor, "but only for the purpose of holding it. At the same instant it throws its folds about its victim and crushes it with the immense power of its constricting muscles. Next it proceeds to cover it with saliva, and then begins the process of swallowing, which may occupy several hours.
"The swallowing is done by the contraction of the muscles of the head and neck, aided by the teeth, which hook backward, so that when anything has once entered it cannot be withdrawn. If a serpent of this species begins to swallow anything that cannot be carried down it will choke to death, and skeletons of pythons have been found with the skeletons of deer, goats, buffalo, or other horned animals, in their jaws. The horns had caused them to stick on the way, and as the snake could not let go for a fresh hold he perished by strangulation, as a punishment for his imprudence.