IN my last letter I told you how the ancient who guards this Eden had complained of the prevalence of snakes, and I, with an experience which Adam does not appear to have possessed, determined to send for a mongoose to deal with the matter. Well, I saw nothing of the serpent, did not even dream about him, and forgot all about the mongoose. It is the thought of what I last wrote to you that reminds me of an excellent story, and a curious trick which I once witnessed, both having to do with the mongoose.

First the story. A boy of twenty got into a train one day, and found, already seated in the carriage, a man of middle age, who had beside him, on the floor, a closed basket. The train started, and by-and-by the boy, feeling dull, looked at his companion, and, to break the ice, said—

“Is that your basket, sir?”

To which the stranger, who did not at all relish the idea of being dragged into a conversation with a strange youth, replied, “Yes, it is,” slightly stammering as he said it.

A pause,—then the boy, “I beg your pardon, but is there some beast in it?”

The man, annoyed, “Ye—es, there’s a m—mongoose in it.”

The boy had no idea what a mongoose was, but he had the curiosity of youth and was unabashed, so he said, “May I ask what the mongoose is for?”

The man, decidedly irritated, and wishing to silence his companion, “G—got a f—friend that sees snakes, t—taking the m—mongoose to catch ’em.”

The boy concluded the stranger was mad, and wishing to pacify him, said—

“Yes, but the snakes are not really there, are they?”

The man, “No, n—neither is the m—mongoose.”

Now as to my experience. Some years ago I was in Calcutta, and, walking in the street one day, I was accosted by a man carrying a bag and leading a mongoose by a string. He said, “I Madras man, master want to see plenty trick, I very good conjurer,” and he produced a sheaf of more or less grimy credentials, in which it was stated, by a number of reputable people, that he was a conjurer of unusual skill. When I had looked at some of the papers, he said, “I come master’s house, do trick, this very clever mongoose, I bring him show master.”

I was quite willing, so I gave him my address and told him to come whenever he liked.

Some days later the conjurer was announced, and there happened to be in my rooms at the time a German dealer in Japanese curios, who had seen rather more than usual during a sixteen years’ residence in Japan and the Farthest East. He was an extremely amusing old person, and glad of the opportunity of seeing the conjurer, who was duly admitted to our presence with his bag of properties. The very clever mongoose came in last, at the end of his string.

The conjurer certainly justified his reputation, and performed some extremely clever tricks, while the mongoose sat by with a blasÉ expression, taking very little interest in the proceedings. When the conjurer had come to the end of his programme, or thought he had done enough, he offered to sell the secret of any trick I liked to buy, and, taking him at his word, I was shown several tricks, the extreme simplicity of the deceit, when once you knew it, being rather aggravating.

In the interest of watching the performance and the subsequent explanations, I had forgotten the mongoose, and the conjurer was already pushing his paraphernalia into the sack, when I said, “But the mongoose, the clever mongoose, where is his trick?”

The conjurer sat down again, pulled the mongoose towards him, and tied the end of his string to a chair leg, giving the little beast plenty of rope on which to play. Then the man pushed round in front of him an earthenware chatty or water-vessel, which had hitherto stood on the floor, a piece of dirty cloth being tied over its mouth. Next the conjurer thrust his hand into the sack, and pulled out one of the trumpet-mouthed pipes on which Indians play weird and discordant airs.

Now I want you to remember that this was my room, that the man’s stock-in-trade was contained in the sack which he had pushed on one side, that the pieces in the game were the mongoose, the chatty (or what it contained), and the pipe, while the lynx-eyed curio-dealer and I sat as close as we pleased to see fair play. I am obliged to tell you that; of what happened I attempt no explanation, I only relate exactly what I saw.

The stage being arranged as I have described, the conjurer drew the chatty towards him, and said, “Got here one very good snake, catch him in field this morning;” at the same time he untied the cloth, and with a jerk threw on the floor an exceedingly lively snake, about three feet long. From the look of it, I should say it was not venomous. The conjurer had thrown the snake close to the mongoose, who jumped out of its way with surprising agility, while the conjurer kept driving it towards the little beast. Neither snake nor mongoose seemed to relish the situation, and to force the game the conjurer seized the snake by the tail, and, swinging it thereby, tried, two or three times, to hit the mongoose with it. This seemed to rouse both beast and reptile, and the mongoose, making a lightning-like movement, seized the snake by the head, shook it for a second or two, dragging it over the matting, and then dropped it on the floor. The instant the snake showed fight the conjurer had let it go, and the mongoose did the rest.

Where the snake had been dragged, the floor was smeared with blood, and now the creature lay, giving a few spasmodic twitches of its body, and then was still. The conjurer pulled it towards him, held it up by the tail, and said laconically, “Snake dead.” The mongoose meanwhile sat quietly licking its paw as though nothing particular had happened.

As the man held it up I looked very carefully at the snake; one eye was bulging out, by reason of a bite just over it; the head and neck were covered with blood, and as far as my judgment went, the thing was dead as Herod. The conjurer dropped the snake on the floor, where it fell limply, as any dead thing would, then he put it on its back and coiled it up, head inwards, saying again, “You see, snake dead.”

He left the thing lying there, and searched in his sack till he found what appeared to be a very small piece of wood, it was, in fact, exactly like a wooden match. The sack, all this time, was at his side, but not close to him, while the snake was straight in front of him, under our noses. Breaking off a very small piece of the wood, he gave it to the mongoose, which began to eat it, apparently as a matter of duty. At the same time the conjurer took an even smaller bit of the same stuff, and opening the snake’s mouth, pushed the stick, or whatever it was, inside, and then shut the mouth again. This transaction would, I think, have convinced any one who saw it that there was no life in the snake.

The conjurer now took up his pipe, and made it squeal some high discordant notes. Then taking it from his lips, he said in Hindustani, as he touched the snake’s tail with the pipe, “Put out your tail,” and the creature’s tail moved slowly outwards, a little way from the rest of the coiled body. The conjurer skirled another stave on his pipe, and as he lowered the instrument with his left hand, he exclaimed, “Snake all right now,” and stretched out his right hand at the same instant, to seize the reptile by the tail. Either as he touched it, or just before, the snake with one movement was up, wriggling and twisting, apparently more alive than when first taken out of the chatty. While the conjurer thrust it back into the vessel there was plenty of time to remark that, miraculous as the resurrection appeared to be, the creature’s eye still protruded through the blood which oozed from the hole in its head.

As he tied the rag over the top of the chatty, the conjurer said, with a smile, “Very clever mongoose,” gathered up his sack, took the string of his clever assistant in his left hand, raised his right to his forehead, and with a low bow, and a respectful “SalÂam, Sahib,” had left the room before I had quite grasped the situation.

I looked at the dealer in curios, and, as with Bill Nye, “he gazed upon me,” but in our few minutes’ conversation, before he left, he could throw no light on the mystery, and we agreed that our philosophy was distinctly at fault.

That evening I related what had taken place to half-a-dozen men, all of whom had lived in India for some years, and I asked if any of them had seen and could explain the phenomenon.

No one had seen it, some had heard of it, all plainly doubted my story. One suggested that a new snake had been substituted for that killed by the mongoose, and another thought that there was no real snake at all, only a wooden make-believe. That rather exasperated me, and I said I was well enough acquainted with snakes to be able to distinguish them from chair-legs. As the company was decidedly sceptical, and inclined to be facetious at my expense, I said I would send for the man again, and they could tell me how the thing was done when they had seen it.

I sent, and it so happened that the conjurer came on a Sunday, when I was sitting in the hall, on the ground-floor of the house where I was staying. The conjurer was already squatted on the white marble flags, with his sack and his chatty (the mongoose’s string held under his foot), when my friends, the unbelievers, or some of them, returned from church, and joined me to watch the proceedings. I will not weary you by going through it all again. What took place then was an exact repetition of what occurred in my room, except that this time the man had a larger chatty, which contained several snakes, and when he had taken out one, and the mongoose had consented to lay hold of it, he worried the creature as a terrier does a rat, and, pulling his string away from under his master’s foot, he carried the snake into the corner of the room, whither the conjurer pursued him and deprived him of his prey. The result of the encounter was that the marble was smeared with streaks of blood that effectually disposed of the wooden-snake theory. That little incident was certainly not planned by the conjurer; but when the victim had been duly coiled on the floor and the bit of stick placed (like the coin with which to fee Charon) within its mouth, then, to my surprise, the conjurer re-opened the chatty, took out another snake, which in its turn was apparently killed by the mongoose, and this one was coiled up and laid on the floor beside the first victim. Then, whilst the first corpse was duly resuscitated, according to the approved methods I have already described, the second lay on the floor, without a sign of life, and it was only when No. 1 had been “resurrectioned,” and put back in the vessel, that the conjurer took up the case of No. 2, and, with him, repeated the miracle.

This time I was so entertained by the manifest and expressed astonishment of the whilom scoffers, that again the conjurer had gone before I had an opportunity of buying this secret, if indeed he would have sold it. I never saw the man again.

There is the story, and, even as it stands, I think you will admit that the explanation is not exactly apparent on the surface. I can assure you, however, that wherever the deception (and I diligently, but unsuccessfully, sought to find it), the performance was the most remarkable I have ever witnessed in any country. To see a creature, full of life,—and a snake, at close quarters, is apt to impress you with its vitality,—to see it killed, just under your eyes, to watch its last convulsive struggles, to feel it in your hands, and gaze at it as it lies, limp and dead, for a space of minutes; then heigh, presto! and the thing is wriggling about as lively as ever. It is a very curious trick—if trick it is.

That, however, is not quite all.

A month or two later I was sitting in the verandah of an hotel in Agra. A number of American globe-trotters occupied most of the other chairs, or stood about the porch, where I noticed there was a little knot of people gathered together. I was idly staring into the street when the words, “Very clever little mongoose,” suddenly attracted my attention, and I realised that two Indian conjurers were amusing the party in the porch. I went at once to the spot, and found the mongoose-snake trick was just beginning. I watched it with great attention, and I noticed that the mongoose only seemed to give the snake one single nip, and there was very little blood drawn. The business proceeded merrily, and in all respects in accordance with what I had already seen, until, at the conclusion of the sort of Salvation-Army resurrection-march, the juggler declared that the snake was quite alive and well—but he was not, he was dead, dead as Bahram the Great Hunter. No piping or tickling or pulling of his tail could awaken the very faintest response from that limp carcass, and the conjurers shuffled their things together with downcast faces, and departed in what the spectators called “a frost.” To them, no doubt, the game was absolutely meaningless; to me it seemed that the mongoose had “exceeded his instructions.”