"I TRIPPED FORWARD IN MY EXCITEMENT."
Why that snake never struck me I do not know to this day, unless it was that, seeing me in the sudden light of the match leaning up against the opposite wall, it had attempted to get out of the pit—into which it also must have dropped by accident like myself—by using my body as a ladder. For all I know the skeleton of the creature still lies in that ten-foot-deep hole. I have not since been there to inquire, nor do I intend to do so in the future; the very thought of the place is nightmare enough.
This incident occurred about four miles below Abutshi, the trading station near Onitsha, before one comes to the shallows that make that part of the Niger so difficult in the dry season.
THE CRUISE OF THE "CROCODILE."
By Commander R. Dowling, R.N.R. (Captain in the Imperial Ottoman Navy).
In December, 1900, I left Port Said for London in command of a small "hopper." For the benefit of the uninitiated, I should explain that this is a vessel with a bottom which opens out and allows the contents of the hold to fall into the sea. The "hopper" had formerly been employed in widening the Suez Canal, but had since been converted into a tank steamer for carrying oil. I had undertaken to bring her to England in tow of another steamer of some seven thousand tons burden.
COMMANDER R. DOWLING, R.N.R., WHO DESCRIBES A PERILOUS VOYAGE HE MADE FROM PORT SAID TO LONDON IN A "HOPPER."
From a Photo. by Apollon Studio.
I got the crew together with some difficulty. When I explained the project to English-speaking seamen, they all refused, in a most emphatic manner, to have anything to do with it, and in the end I had to fall back on a number of men to whom I was unable to explain it at all properly. They were one Swede, the mate; a Greek and a Frenchman, whom I understood to be engineers; four Italian seamen and four Greek firemen, and an Italian cook. Excepting the Swede, who understood English with difficulty, not one of the crew could make out a word I said, so that during the first part of the voyage I was compelled to give orders to the ship's company in a kind of pantomimic dumb-show.