100 
THE AGONY OF TERROR. 
turned to find a clear place to dip from, — a place in 
which three-inch snakes Avould be apparent if there. In 
the mean time, the rest of the party had been arrested by 
the wall fixrther to the left, and were singing out to know 
if it could he passed on our side. Suddenly, I was stag- 
gering sideways toward my rifle with a confused idea 
that I should have it in my hands, and my face turned- 
toward my companion. 
“A stream — such a scream as never before reached 
me, such a one as I hope never to hear again — was ring- 
ing in my fiightened ear its painful notes of agonized 
terror. It drove the tumultuous blood to my startled 
heart and sent a shivering feeling of despair through my 
unnerved limbs. It reached our distant friends and was 
echoed back by their alarmed rally-cry — ‘A tiger! a 
tiger!’— and the sound of rushing feet that bore their 
owners to the doubtful rescue. It was one of those cries 
of dire extremity, of helpless agony, that drag man to his 
fellow-man in spite of difficulty and danger and death. 
I turned upon the scene with levelled gun. 
“It was an awful one: the agony of terror is always 
awful. 
“With bent frame and livid and distorted features, a 
strong man was gripping between his knees a bleeding 
hand. Terror had almost deprived him of speech and 
seemed to have shaken his ordinarily stolid brain. He 
could only rock himself back and forth and mutter, in a 
hoarse whisper, ‘A snake bit me! a snake bit me! a 
snake bit me !’ 
“It was a fearful sight. I looked around me for its 
author, and in my then excited state of mind quailed 
