72 THE SNAKES OF SOUTH AFRICA. 
into the bush as fast as his ribs and scales would propel him, 
evidently as much terrified as I was. When I was able to collect 
my thoughts I looked around for my gun and hat, and wandered 
off, calculating whether the Python could have managed to 
swallow me whole. 
THE PYTHON AND THE COCK. 
Sitting on the stoep of a Dutch farmhouse listening to the 
tales of a tough old Boer hunter, a rooster suddenly began to 
cry out in evident distress, down amongst the foliage in the garden. 
We made off in the direction of the sound, and there in a shady 
glade was a tremendous Python doing his mightiest to constrict 
the fowl. The rooster’s head was sticking out in one direction, 
his tail in another, and his legs and wings were north, south, east 
and west. The Python had him enveloped in his great coils, 
but the fowl’s body was so comparatively small, and the Python 
so large, that he somehow could not get a sufficient grip to squash 
the rooster, and in the meantime the cock was crying out for aid, 
assisted by his wives, who kept at a safe distance and cackled. 
We darted back to the house, procured a mealie sack, and from 
three points of the compass stalked the Python like stealthy Red 
Indians. A signal was given, and we simultaneously rushed in 
and assaulted him. In his bewilderment he raised his head to 
take in the situation. Before he could decide how to act, the 
Dutchman clapped the mouth of the sack over the Python’s’ 
head ; his son and I threw ourselves on the huge body, and after 
about fifteen minutes’ tumbling and rolling around, we managed 
to get him safely lodged inside the sack, which he almost filled. 
We kept this Python alive in a cage in the grounds of the Natal 
Museum for a long time. 
BucK-HwunTING INCIDENT. 
At the big buck hunts in Natal, it is the practice to gather 
together from fifty to a hundred kraal natives, with their dogs. 
These natives would spread themselves out crescent-fashion and 
enter the dense bush, and we fellows with the guns would go away 
