Remarkable Endurance.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXVI, Issue 8425, 25 January 1899, Page 4

Remarkable Endurance.

Is the Wide World Magazine for November, Mr A. Sarathkumar Ghosh tells some snake stories. We sometimes hear thrilling accounts, he says, of men being bitten in the jungle far from elaborate assistance, and of chopping off the injured limb with a sword in frantic heroism ; but one at least of such incidents is authentic within the writer's knowledge. The Eastern Bengal Railway runs due north from Calcutta and after a couple of junctions reaches Darjceling. One dark and dismal niuht, when the wind was howling aud the rain just turning to a drizzle after a terrific tropical downpour, the engine-driver of a train— who, by the way, was an Englishman, as in fact they mostly are on Indian railways— was helping the stoker to shovel some coal from the shed to the tender, when suddenly he felt a sharp pain in his finger. On a light being brought a huge cobra was revealed coiled up on the top of the coals, with its head erect and its hood expanded. Driven to that refuge from the rain, it had launched forth at the driver when he had reached for the coal. What was he to do in that howling wilderness ? There was no time to lose ; a few seconds more and the poison would mount up beyond his reach. He thought of cutting off the arm — but with what? He had no instrument. True, he might lay it on the line and ask the stoker to drive the train over it. But what if the arm still dangled by a line of flesh, thin, but yet enough to communicate the poison? And how to stop the subsequent How of blood? These thoughts flashed through his mind faster than it takes to write them. Suddenly, clenching his teeth in frantic determination, he jumped on to the engine, flung the furnace open, and thrust his arm into the fire. There, like a modern Scicvola, he hold it till it was burned down to the elbow ; then he fainted. The stoker took the train to the next station, where the injured man was treated temporarily, and afterwards brought down to Calcutta, where he finally recovered.