I waited no longer, but sprang from the chair, upsetting it and the books in my flight, and fairly flew to the door. I reached Malcolm in safety, and he dragged me outside, shutting the door behind us, and leaving Nellie and the python in the church. The dog’s piteous cries of agony and fear sickened us, and made Malcolm attempt a rescue. He rushed in once again, calling to the dog, in the vain hope that she might at least die with us at her side. But she could not see; blinded with fright she ran wildly about. Her end was horrible to contemplate, and I pressed my hands to my ears to shut out the sounds, running from the church and close proximity of the fearful creature under whose spell I had been for so long. I sank down under the shade of some trees and thanked God I was safe!
But the cries of poor Nellie, the thud, thud of the bellows, and the mournful dirge I had repeated over and over again banged and clanged unceasingly in my head, remaining with me through many days of utter prostration and exhaustion.
“THE KAFFIRS, SEEING ITS SKIN STRETCHED IN THE SUN TO DRY, LOST THEIR SUPERSTITIOUS BELIEF IN THE MAGIC POWERS OF THE CREATURE.”
The last music that python heard was the crack of Malcolm’s rifle as he shot it in the church. That same afternoon the Kaffirs, seeing its skin stretched in the sun to dry, lost their superstitious belief in the magic powers of the creature, and marvelled at its huge size. The mottled, shaded skin now hangs, faded, dull, and dusty, after many years, on the walls of a college museum, amidst other South African trophies. We buried what remained of poor Nellie in the shadow of St. John-in-the-Wilderness.
Across America by Airship.
THE STORY OF AN ILL-STARRED ENTERPRISE.
By Arthur Inkersley, of San Francisco.
Now that airships are so much to the fore, this account of the meteoric career of the largest “dirigible balloon” ever constructed—larger even than Count Zeppelin’s unfortunate monster—will be read with interest. The inventor had an ambitious scheme for running luxuriously-fitted aerial liners between New York and San Francisco, but his first ship got no farther than the ascension ground. The photographs accompanying the article are particularly striking.