Page:The Blind Bow-Boy (IA blindbowboy00vanv).pdf/97

 This little lady to the right, announced the barker, is the bravest little lady in the show. Only sixteen years of age, she handles the fiercest and most dangerous rrreptiles with the carelessness of a farmhand petting a tame calf. She has visited the jungle and brought back with her vipers with fangs so deadly that one dart would kill a buffalo, boa constrictors who could fold a full-grown African lion in their coils and crrrush him to death, the deadly poisonous Indian cobra, more dreaded by the natives than the man-eating tiger! And to make her act more dangerous, it is our custom to feed these venomous reptiles only once a month. They are hungry now. They have not been fed for three weeks. Show the ladies and gentlemen what you can do, Zimbule.

As a hurdy-gurdy groaned out a melancholy rendering of I hear you calling me, the little lady stooped over a great chest, painted bright pink and studded with brass-headed nails, and raised the cover. From the gaping box one gathered a confused impression of a nest of lethargic serpents. One, more active than the rest, elevated his grear jewelled head, with its staring, beaded eyes, and protruded his forked tongue. With a lack of relish, an active distaste, indeed, which must have been apparent even to the small boys present, the little lady lifted the huge, scaly monster out of the chest and disposed his heavy iridescent folds around her torso. Up to a certain point, the snake sub-