The following paragraph is now going the round of the newspapers without
reference to the source of information. I copy it from the _Morning
Chronicle_ of Friday, December 9.
"_Escape of a Snake from a Man's Mouth._--An extraordinary circumstance
occurred a few days ago to Jonathan Smith, gunner's mate, who was paid
off at Portsmouth on the 6th of May last, from her Majesty's ship
Hastings, 72 guns, on her return to England from the East Indies. He
obtained six weeks' leave. On the expiration of that time, after seeing
his friends at Chatham, he joined the Excellent, gunnery-ship at
Portsmouth. After some time he was taken unwell, {30} his illness
increased, and he exhibited a swelling in his stomach and limbs. The
surgeon considering that it arose from dropsy, he was removed into
Haslar Hospital, and after much painful suffering, although he had
every attention paid to him by the medical officers of the
establishment, he died. Two hours before his death a living snake, nine
inches in length, came out of his mouth, causing considerable surprise.
How the reptile got into his stomach is a mystery. It is supposed that
the deceased must have swallowed the reptile when it was young,
drinking water when the Hastings was out in India, as the ship laid for
some time at Trincomalee, and close to a small island called Snake
Island. The crew used very often to find snakes on board. The way they
used to get into the ship was by the cable, and through the hawsers
into the forecastle. The deceased was forty years of age. He was
interred in Kingston churchyard. His remains were followed to the grave
by the ship's company of the Excellent."
The proverbial wisdom of the serpent is here clearly exemplified. It has
long been well known among sailors that rats have the sense to change their
quarters when a vessel becomes cranky; whence I believe arises the epithet
"rat," which is sometimes scurrilously applied to a politic man who removes
to the opposition benches when he perceives symptoms of dissolution in the
ministry. The snake, in the simple narrative above quoted, was evidently
guided by some such prudential motive when he quitted the stomach of the
dying sailor, which could not continue for any great length of time to
afford protection and support to the cunning reptile.
I have an amiable friend who habitually swallows with avidity the tales of
sea-serpents which are periodically imported into this country on American
bottoms, and I have sufficient credulity myself to receive, without strict
examination into evidence, the account of the swarming of the snakes up the
cables into a ship; but I cannot so readily believe that "considerable
surprise" was caused in the mind of any rational biped by the fact that a
living snake, which had attained to the length of nine inches, took the
very natural precaution to come out of a dying man's mouth.
How the reptile got into his stomach is a mystery which the newspaper
writer has attempted to clear up, but he has not attempted to explain how
the reptile managed to live during many months in so unusual a habitation
as a man's stomach.
Some obliging correspondent of "N. & Q." will perhaps have the kindness to
explain this remarkable fact in natural history.