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!