King Edward and King Cobra

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 256, 25 July 1936, Page 25

King Edward and King Cobra

To Saint George and the Dragon must now be added King Edward and the Cobra.

Sir Frederick O'Connor tells the tale. When King Edward, then Prince of Wales, was tiger hunting in Nepal, one afternoon was given to small-game shooting. The Prince was one of a party walking up iu line when Sir Frederick heard a double shot from his gun, followed by excited shouts from the native beaters. Sir Frederick, called by the Prince to see what had been shot, found him standing with bis still smoking gun in his hand and a large dead snake at his feet. The Prince explained that he had seen the snake moving through the undergrowth. had fired one barrel and missed. The snake turned and came right at its assailant with venomous intent. The Prince’s second barrel disposed of it. Otherwise there might have been no Edward the Eighth, for it was a king cobra over ten feet long, one of the deadliest and most ferocious of Indian snakes. It was only three yards away when the gun killed it. But what the Prince said was, “I would sooner have shot that snake on foot than all the tigers in India from the back of an elephant.”