I have since been to a great extent cured; but in my earlier African days, somewhere about eleven years ago, I was full of romantic ideas and intoxicated with the strange glamour and mystery that pervaded everything connected with the great Niger River and its unknown territories. Having tied up to a bank late one afternoon, half an hour before sunset, I took my gun—a sporting Martini—and set out from the little river launch, of which I was the sole white passenger, and made my way through the long grass skirting the banks of the stream, until I emerged into an open, ploughed field, with its lines of mounds about eighteen inches high, indicating guinea-corn or yam cultivation. My intention was to reach a backwater, some half a mile away, which I had noticed as we steamed up the river a short time before tying up. I hoped I might find hippo, or, at any rate, an alligator or two, hidden in the seclusion of this secret byway of the great river.
Crossing the field I entered a kind of copse, consisting of minor trees and scrub. Pushing my way through I found some clearer ground, carpeted with the gourd plant. Ahead of me I noticed that the land suddenly dipped to a large pool that might have been connected with the main river. This, I thought, would do as well as my backwater, especially as I heard just then the distant grunting roar of a hippo. Next moment, without warning, the solid ground gave way under my feet, and I went hurtling down into black darkness, bringing up with a tremendous shock that seemed to jar me from tip to toe.
MR. E. F. MARTIN, WHO HAD AN APPALLING STRUGGLE WITH A SNAKE AT THE BOTTOM OF A PIT.
From a Photograph.
When I had recovered from my utter astonishment, and had made certain that no bones were broken, I looked about and above me to see where I was and what had happened. Around and beneath me I could see nothing; everything was shrouded in impenetrable blackness. Above me, however, I saw the evening sky, gradually fading into night. My gun was gone. Where was I? What had happened? Had the earth opened and swallowed me up?
I decided to strike a light and see what kind of place I had fallen into. The blue spurt and the flickering flame, settling almost immediately into a thin, steady tongue of yellow fire, revealed to me the fact that I had fallen into some kind of trap—probably for hippo—and that this trap was some eight feet long by five broad and ten deep. At the bottom, at regular intervals, were placed pointed stakes about eighteen inches apart. Had I fallen prone I should have been impaled. I had apparently, then, something to be thankful for. As this thought struck me my match burnt the tips of my fingers and I dropped it. As it fell something caught my eye that froze my blood in my veins—some coiled black thing was slowly moving in the farther corner! Part of its body was enshrouded in the shadow of the stakes, but I saw sufficient to convince me that my companion was some kind of venomous snake. Have any of my readers known what it is to feel the heart stop dead still, after one fierce bound into the throat, the body go cold and clammy, like dank, damp clay—like the earth that I leaned up against in that moment of dumb, stricken terror? You that have know what I felt then, ten feet down in the bowels of the earth, imprisoned with that coiling thing. You that have not, pray that you never may, for it seems as though the life is passing from one in the cold sweat which oozes through every pore. I leant against the side of the pit trembling like an aspen leaf. Oh! for my gun and a steady light! At least I could then stake all in one try for life. My hands shaking violently, I lit another match and glanced in the direction of the horror. I might have spared my pains. The brute—a long, black, shiny snake, with a sort of hooded head—was actually at my feet, the sinuous body stretched across the rough floor among the pointed stakes!
I stood still as though paralyzed, the match burning like a tiny flare in my uplifted right hand. The snake came straight on without striking, and as the match went out it started to coil up my left leg. The sensation of that strange, gliding grip, which squeezed the muscles as it passed along, is impossible to describe. Up it came in the darkness, higher and higher still, feeling like a hawser of steel round my body—and heavy! Suddenly—to my dying day I shall never forget the horror of that moment—its cold, hard snout touched my chin. It was just a sort of gliding touch, with no attempt at striking. Obeying a mad impulse, I gripped straight for where the neck should be, judging by the feel of the snout on my chin, and with the strength of a maniac my fingers closed on the snake just behind the head. Feeling my advantage, I forced my two thumbs deep into its throat. Then I tripped forward in my excitement, the coils of the snake suddenly contracting with a fierce pressure as I strengthened my grip. Down I went, tearing myself badly on two stakes as I fell, gashing my right leg above the knee—the scar remains to this day—and receiving a nasty bruise on my left shoulder. In spite of my fall, however, I had enough presence of mind to keep the terrible head at arm's length, and now, once on the ground, in spite of cuts, bruises, and the twining coils round my arm, I got on to my knees and banged and dashed that deadly head on the hard earth and against the stakes I could feel on either side. How long I kept on in my wild, frenzied fury I don't know, but gradually the fierce-gripping coils relaxed, until at last the limp form hung from my bleeding hands, lifeless and harmless.
I don't remember what happened then, but I think I lost consciousness for a time. All I know for certain is that I was hauled out of that hole some time later—about 8 p.m., to be exact—by two of the coloured deck-hands, who had tracked me through the field and the bushes, and, ultimately, to the edge of the hippo trap. They guessed that I had fallen in, and the lowering of a lamp that they carried proved this to be the case. My gun lay where it had fallen, close to the edge.
