IMPRISONED BY A SNAKE.

Waikato Times, Volume XXX, Issue 2462, 21 April 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

IMPRISONED BY A SNAKE.

(NEW Y'ikk SUN.)

Twksty years ago I was the managing clerk in an English merchant's office. My work was heavy. Many nights I sat at my books until far into the small hours of the morning. Once or twice I actually dozed off into a sleep, to be awakened by

the woman who cleaned the various rooir.s coming to her work. The house I was connected with had a hrarich establishment in India doing a large business,

ul many curious consignments of goods, uite outside of our usual articles of comicro', passed through our hands. Price:ss cloths and native fabrics, brass and

gold ornaments set with precious stones, ejllectionsof stones, botanical specimens, birds, animals—everything, in fact, until at times the contents of the cases, if opened and spread out, would have made a very average museum. One afternoon a large box was delivered from one of the ships labelled, " To be kept in a moderately warm place " I was away from the warehouse at the tim» of its arrival, and the men placed it in the outer office. On my return I casually noticed the case on passing, and saw that one end was slightly finished, and if by some heavier case falling on/it. This was a mere accidental observance. My private office | was just four wall*, hung with maps and charts. A writing bureau in the centre of the floor behind the door; behind the bureau a large iron fireproof safe some six feet high and four feet square, standing twelve or fourteen inches from the wall, and a case of books and three or four chairs completed the inventory. I was going to work late, and in a short time I was alone in the large building. I worked steadily until midnight. I arose and paced around the room for si few minutes. A sound, as of a chair being moved in the adjoining room, startled me. I stepped to the door and opened it. The light from a street, lamp lit the room fairly well, and after a glance I concluded it must have been fancy, and returned to my desk, leaving the door open. A few minutes afterwards a faint, harsh sound came from the same direction, a curious rubbing sound, undeniably within the next room, and quite as undeniably moving towards the passage leading to where I was sitting. I rose to my feet, and as I did so the head and neck of a huge snake protruded through the doorway into the well lit room. I stood transfixed with

horror. When the reptile saw roe ifc stopped for a second, its eyes grew more and more aflame until they resembled two lurid balls of fire, its tongue darted in and out of its mouth, and the head raised higher and higher until nearly level with my own. I could hear it? body coiling and recoiling in fury in the darkness beyond, and there I stood, powerless, unarmed, and apparently unable to move. I looked once around in a despairing search for some outlet of escapp, and, as I took my eyes from those of the horrible reptile, ft lowered its head and darted towards me. Another second and it would

have caught me, when, seeing the open safe, I rushed in and shut the door. A small petty cash book fell to the floor, half in, half out of the safe, holding the door open about hall an inch. But for that book I would have speedily been suffocated. Not thinking of that I stooped and tried to draw the book inside, but the snake, moving simultaneously with myself, anil dashed itself against the safe, and in its brute fury, thinking the safe part and paicelof myself, had thrown its coil round it, compressing the door so tightly that I fortunately could not remove the book, which was my sole means of ventilation. Half crazed with fright, I pulled and lugged at it without avail. The perspiration rolled down my face, and my heart beat almost to bursting, and even with the book holding the door ajar I seemed to be at the point of suffocation. Grasping for breath and utterly nerveless I fell against the door and slid to the floor in a dead faint. How long I remained so I cannot tell—perhaps an hour. At last my senses returned, and, although dreadfully cramped by the position into which I had subsided in the narrow space, I felt I had not the power to rise, and lay there gazing through the narrow opening at the two folds which encircled my refuge, feeling a horrible fascination, that I shall never forget. I even passed my finger out and touched one, feeling a quivering movement that told me the reptile had drawn its coils to their utmost tension, in hope of crushing the shell that held the precious kernel of myself. By an effort I collected my ideas, and remembering the box and the crushed end, could readily account for the presence of the intruder. I knew that it was customary to feed them to satiety before shipping them off, and* 38 a rule, that they arrived here still in a stage of stupor. This one might have had a long passage, and, coming out of the sleep, wanted water, grew furious, burst the weak end of the case, and, finding me, attacked me by instinct. I grew calmer and investigated my position thoroughly. I rose to my feet, and as I did so iny foot rested on something uneven. I picked it up and found it to be one of those Ion;* ink erasers, having a blade about four inches long, sharp as a razor, tempered like a Damascus blade, the handle being about five inches long and flut in nhnpc. It must have fallen out of the cash book, these knives frequently being shut in the books by the careless clerks. Taking the knife in my light, hand, I thrust it into the thinnest fold with all my strength. There was a horrible, sickening, tearing Hound, and quickly withdrawing the blade I thrust it again and again into the folds, until at the third or fourth stab I saw the folds relax and go sliding down the sides of the safes to the floor, lyinj* there squirming and writhing in convulsions. I dared not move for nearly an hour, until all seemed quiet; then opening the door, I dashed across the room into the outer offiee, bangcrl to the door, locked it, and, hatlcss, rushed to the nearest police station. At first my ) story was discredited, and I was almost locked up as being drunk, but eventually four officers armed with revolvers came with me. We found the reptile nearly dead, but still tremulous when touched, the cuts with the keen knife, owing to the extreme tension of the coils, having nearly severed the body in half. It measured just 33 feet 5 inches from head to the tail.