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. THE CRUISE OF THE "CROCODILE."