+By E. F. Martin, late of the Royal Niger Company's Service.+
I have since been to a great extent cured; but in my earlier African
days, somewhere about eleven years ago, I was full of romantic ideas
and intoxicated with the strange glamour and mystery that pervaded
everything connected with the great Niger River and its unknown
territories. Having tied up to a bank late one afternoon, half an hour
before sunset, I took my gun--a sporting Martini--and set out from
the little river launch, of which I was the sole white passenger, and
made my way through the long grass skirting the banks of the stream,
until I emerged into an open, ploughed field, with its lines of mounds
about eighteen inches high, indicating guinea-corn or yam cultivation.
My intention was to reach a backwater, some half a mile away, which I
had noticed as we steamed up the river a short time before tying up. I
hoped I might find hippo, or, at any rate, an alligator or two, hidden
in the seclusion of this secret byway of the great river.
Crossing the field I entered a kind of copse, consisting of minor
trees and scrub. Pushing my way through I found some clearer ground,
carpeted with the gourd plant. Ahead of me I noticed that the land
suddenly dipped to a large pool that might have been connected with
the main river. This, I thought, would do as well as my backwater,
especially as I heard just then the distant grunting roar of a hippo.
Next moment, without warning, the solid ground gave way under my feet,
and I went hurtling down into black darkness, bringing up with a
tremendous shock that seemed to jar me from tip to toe.
[Illustration: MR. E. F. MARTIN, WHO HAD AN APPALLING STRUGGLE WITH A
SNAKE AT THE BOTTOM OF A PIT.
_From a Photograph._]
When I had recovered from my utter astonishment, and had made certain
that no bones were broken, I looked about and above me to see where I
was and what had happened. Around and beneath me I could see nothing;
everything was shrouded in impenetrable blackness. Above me, however,
I saw the evening sky, gradually fading into night. My gun was gone.
Where was I? What had happened? Had the earth opened and swallowed me
up?
I decided to strike a light and see what kind of place I had fallen
into. The blue spurt and the flickering flame, settling almost
immediately into a thin, steady tongue of yellow fire, revealed to
me the fact that I had fallen into some kind of trap--probably for
hippo--and that this trap was some eight feet long by five broad and
ten deep. At the bottom, at regular intervals, were placed pointed
stakes about eighteen inches apart. Had I fallen prone I should have
been impaled. I had apparently, then, something to be thankful for.
As this thought struck me my match burnt the tips of my fingers and
I dropped it. As it fell something caught my eye that froze my blood
in my veins--some coiled black thing was slowly moving in the farther
corner! Part of its body was enshrouded in the shadow of the stakes,
but I saw sufficient to convince me that my companion was some kind of
venomous snake. Have any of my readers known what it is to feel the
heart stop dead still, after one fierce bound into the throat, the body
go cold and clammy, like dank, damp clay--like the earth that I leaned
up against in that moment of dumb, stricken terror? You that have know
what I felt then, ten feet down in the bowels of the earth, imprisoned
with that coiling thing. You that have not, pray that you never may,
for it seems as though the life is passing from one in the cold sweat
which oozes through every pore. I leant against the side of the pit
trembling like an aspen leaf. Oh! for my gun and a steady light! At
least I could then stake all in one try for life. My hands shaking
violently, I lit another match and glanced in the direction of the
horror. I might have spared my pains. The brute--a long, black, shiny
snake, with a sort of hooded head--was actually at my feet, the sinuous
body stretched across the rough floor among the pointed stakes!
I stood still as though paralyzed, the match burning like a tiny
flare in my uplifted right hand. The snake came straight on without
striking, and as the match went out it started to coil up my left
leg. The sensation of that strange, gliding grip, which squeezed the
muscles as it passed along, is impossible to describe. Up it came in
the darkness, higher and higher still, feeling like a hawser of steel
round my body--and heavy! Suddenly--to my dying day I shall never
forget the horror of that moment--its cold, hard snout touched my chin.
It was just a sort of gliding touch, with no attempt at striking.
Obeying a mad impulse, I gripped straight for where the neck should be,
judging by the feel of the snout on my chin, and with the strength of a
maniac my fingers closed on the snake just behind the head. Feeling my
advantage, I forced my two thumbs deep into its throat. Then I tripped
forward in my excitement, the coils of the snake suddenly contracting
with a fierce pressure as I strengthened my grip. Down I went, tearing
myself badly on two stakes as I fell, gashing my right leg above the
knee--the scar remains to this day--and receiving a nasty bruise on my
left shoulder. In spite of my fall, however, I had enough presence of
mind to keep the terrible head at arm's length, and now, once on the
ground, in spite of cuts, bruises, and the twining coils round my arm,
I got on to my knees and banged and dashed that deadly head on the hard
earth and against the stakes I could feel on either side. How long
I kept on in my wild, frenzied fury I don't know, but gradually the
fierce-gripping coils relaxed, until at last the limp form hung from my
bleeding hands, lifeless and harmless.
I don't remember what happened then, but I think I lost consciousness
for a time. All I know for certain is that I was hauled out of that
hole some time later--about 8 p.m., to be exact--by two of the coloured
deck-hands, who had tracked me through the field and the bushes, and,
ultimately, to the edge of the hippo trap. They guessed that I had
fallen in, and the lowering of a lamp that they carried proved this to
be the case. My gun lay where it had fallen, close to the edge.
[Illustration: "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.