The conjurer now took up his pipe, and made it squeal some high discordant notes. Then taking it from his lips, he said in Hindustani, as he touched the snake’s tail with the pipe, “Put out your tail,” and the creature’s tail moved slowly outwards, a little way from the rest of the coiled body. The conjurer skirled another stave on his pipe, and as he lowered the instrument with his left hand, he exclaimed, “Snake all right now,” and stretched out his right hand at the same instant, to seize the reptile by the tail. Either as he touched it, or just before, the snake with one movement was up, wriggling and twisting, apparently more alive than when first taken out of the chatty. While the conjurer thrust it back into the vessel there was plenty of time to remark that, miraculous as the resurrection appeared to be, the creature’s eye still protruded through the blood which oozed from the hole in its head.
As he tied the rag over the top of the chatty, the conjurer said, with a smile, “Very clever mongoose,” gathered up his sack, took the string of his clever assistant in his left hand, raised his right to his forehead, and with a low bow, and a respectful “Salâam, Sahib,” had left the room before I had quite grasped the situation.
I looked at the dealer in curios, and, as with Bill Nye, “he gazed upon me,” but in our few minutes’ conversation, before he left, he could throw no light on the mystery, and we agreed that our philosophy was distinctly at fault.
That evening I related what had taken place to half-a-dozen men, all of whom had lived in India for some years, and I asked if any of them had seen and could explain the phenomenon.
No one had seen it, some had heard of it, all plainly doubted my story. One suggested that a new snake had been substituted for that killed by the mongoose, and another thought that there was no real snake at all, only a wooden make-believe. That rather exasperated me, and I said I was well enough acquainted with snakes to be able to distinguish them from chair-legs. As the company was decidedly sceptical, and inclined to be facetious at my expense, I said I would send for the man again, and they could tell me how the thing was done when they had seen it.
I sent, and it so happened that the conjurer came on a Sunday, when I was sitting in the hall, on the ground-floor of the house where I was staying. The conjurer was already squatted on the white marble flags, with his sack and his chatty (the mongoose’s string held under his foot), when my friends, the unbelievers, or some of them, returned from church, and joined me to watch the proceedings. I will not weary you by going through it all again. What took place then was an exact repetition of what occurred in my room, except that this time the man had a larger chatty, which contained several snakes, and when he had taken out one, and the mongoose had consented to lay hold of it, he worried the creature as a terrier does a rat, and, pulling his string away from under his master’s foot, he carried the snake into the corner of the room, whither the conjurer pursued him and deprived him of his prey. The result of the encounter was that the marble was smeared with streaks of blood that effectually disposed of the wooden-snake theory. That little incident was certainly not planned by the conjurer; but when the victim had been duly coiled on the floor and the bit of stick placed (like the coin with which to fee Charon) within its mouth, then, to my surprise, the conjurer re-opened the chatty, took out another snake, which in its turn was apparently killed by the mongoose, and this one was coiled up and laid on the floor beside the first victim. Then, whilst the first corpse was duly resuscitated, according to the approved methods I have already described, the second lay on the floor, without a sign of life, and it was only when No. 1 had been “resurrectioned,” and put back in the vessel, that the conjurer took up the case of No. 2, and, with him, repeated the miracle.
This time I was so entertained by the manifest and expressed astonishment of the whilom scoffers, that again the conjurer had gone before I had an opportunity of buying this secret, if indeed he would have sold it. I never saw the man again.
There is the story, and, even as it stands, I think you will admit that the explanation is not exactly apparent on the surface. I can assure you, however, that wherever the deception (and I diligently, but unsuccessfully, sought to find it), the performance was the most remarkable I have ever witnessed in any country. To see a creature, full of life,—and a snake, at close quarters, is apt to impress you with its vitality,—to see it killed, just under your eyes, to watch its last convulsive struggles, to feel it in your hands, and gaze at it as it lies, limp and dead, for a space of minutes; then heigh, presto! and the thing is wriggling about as lively as ever. It is a very curious trick—if trick it is.
That, however, is not quite all.