Tale of a Cobra and Mouse.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 228, 12 November 1887, Page 9

Tale of a Cobra and Mouse.

I was visiting at a friend's bouse in Calcutta, says Mr Keane, in his " Three Years of a Wanderer's Life," and was on this evening sitting at dinner alone. The table had been some time waiting for the host, and I had at last received a note that he was not coming home, so I sat down alone. I had finished dinner and was still lingering at the table, when a little mouse ran up to tho top of a bowl with a sort of basket-work cover on it. I should not have thought that of itself very singular, for the "tribes on our frontier" made most unexpected incursions. But when he did get perched on the cover of the bowl, the little fellow rose on his hind legs, with his hands before him, and began to entertain me with the funniest little mouse song you can imagine. "Chit-chit, cheep-cheep-chit," he whistled, and kept it up before me in a most unembarrassed and self-possessed little way. I must have been a trying audience, for I leaned back in my r.hair and roared with laughter. As I looked at the little performer I gradually became aware of a shadow, a something strange gliding out from behind a dish toward the mouse. Silently and slowly it neared the mouse; in another minute a beady snake's eye glittered in the lamplight. My hand stole softly for the carving-knife. The snake reared his head level with the mouse, and the poor little fellow's song, which had never ceased, became piercingly shrill, though he sat up rigidly erect and motionless. The head of the snake drew back a little to strike ; out flashed the carving-knife. The spell was broken instantly, for the mouse dropped and scampered. The snake was wounded, for there were spots of blood on the tablecloth, and it was writhing about among the dishes and plates. I could not make a bold stroke at it for fear of breaking the crockery, and whenever I made a dig with the point it was like pricking the garter. I would not have believed until I nad seen it how much of himself a snake can stow away under the edge of a plate. At last I saw the end of his tail projecting out from under a dish. A snake held by the tail and swung rapidly around cannot turn back and bite. I grabbed the tail with my left thumb and finger, and drew him out till I judged the middle of his body to be under the knife, then I came down and cut him in two. He was a cobra — a little one about two feet long — but quite long enough to " gravel " a man.

Mr J. F. Graham, who some years ago was a member of the Hoskin's Dramatic Company, was the stage manager at the Exeter Theatre at the time of the fatal fire. He has been in no less than four theatres when they were on fire.. These were the Theatre Royal, Edinburgh ; the Princess Theatre, Dunedin ; the Opera House, Wellington ; and now the Theatre Royal, Exeter". He had a marvellous escape from the latter. "La Fille dv Tambour Major" has been running at the Princess Theatre, Melbourne, with Mr Knight Aston in the role of JMonthabor, the Tatnbour-niajor.