Lair of the White Worm

of men as impossible?  Even in our own day there are seen the traces of
animals, if not the animals themselves, of stupendous size--veritable
survivals from earlier ages, preserved by some special qualities in their
habitats.  I remember meeting a distinguished man in India, who had the
reputation of being a great shikaree, who told me that the greatest
temptation he had ever had in his life was to shoot a giant snake which
he had come across in the Terai of Upper India.  He was on a
tiger-shooting expedition, and as his elephant was crossing a nullah, it
squealed.  He looked down from his howdah and saw that the elephant had
stepped across the body of a snake which was dragging itself through the
jungle.  'So far as I could see,' he said, 'it must have been eighty or
one hundred feet in length.  Fully forty or fifty feet was on each side
of the track, and though the weight which it dragged had thinned it, it
was as thick round as a man's body.  I suppose you know that when you are
after tiger, it is a point of honour not to shoot at anything else, as
life may depend on it.  I could easily have spined this monster, but I
felt that I must not--so, with regret, I had to let it go.'

"Just imagine such a monster anywhere in this country, and at once we
could get a sort of idea of the 'worms,' which possibly did frequent the
great morasses which spread round the mouths of many of the great
European rivers."

"I haven't the least doubt, sir, that there may have been such monsters
as you have spoken of still existing at a much later period than is
generally accepted," replied Adam.  "Also, if there were such things,
that this was the very place for them.  I have tried to think over the
matter since you pointed out the configuration of the ground.  But it
seems to me that there is a hiatus somewhere.  Are there not mechanical
difficulties?"

"In what way?"

"Well, our antique monster must have been mighty heavy, and the distances
he had to travel were long and the ways difficult.  From where we are now
sitting down to the level of the mud-holes is a distance of several
hundred feet--I am leaving out of consideration altogether any lateral
distance.  Is it possible that there was a way by which a monster could
travel up and down, and yet no chance recorder have ever seen him?  Of
course we have the legends; but is not some more exact evidence necessary
in a scientific investigation?"

"My dear Adam, all you say is perfectly right, and, were we starting on
such an investigation, we could not do better than follow your reasoning.
But, my dear boy, you must remember that all this took place thousands of
years ago.  You must remember, too, that all records of the kind that
would help us are lacking.  Also, that the places to be considered were
desert, so far as human habitation or population are considered.  In the
vast desolation of such a place as complied with the necessary
conditions, there must have been such profusion of natural growth as
would bar the progress of men formed as we are.  The lair of such a
monster would not have been disturbed for hundreds--or thousands--of
years.  Moreover, these creatures must have occupied places quite
inaccessible to man.  A snake who could make himself comfortable in a
quagmire, a hundred feet deep, would be protected on the outskirts by
such stupendous morasses as now no longer exist, or which, if they exist
anywhere at all, can be on very few places on the earth's surface.  Far
be it from me to say that in more elemental times such things could not
have been.  The condition belongs to the geologic age--the great birth
and growth of the world, when natural forces ran riot, when the struggle
for existence was so savage that no vitality which was not founded in a
gigantic form could have even a possibility of survival.  That such a
time existed, we have evidences in geology, but there only; we can never
expect proofs such as this age demands.  We can only imagine or surmise
such things--or such conditions and such forces as overcame them."




CHAPTER VI--HAWK AND PIGEON


At breakfast-time next morning Sir Nathaniel and Mr. Salton were seated
when Adam came hurriedly into the room.

"Any news?" asked his uncle mechanically.

"Four."

"Four what?" asked Sir Nathaniel.

"Snakes," said Adam, helping himself to a grilled kidney.

"Four snakes.  I don't understand."

"Mongoose," said Adam, and then added explanatorily: "I was out with the
mongoose just after three."

"Four snakes in one morning!  Why, I didn't know there were so many on
the Brow"--the local name for the western cliff.  "I hope that wasn't the
consequence of our talk of last night?"

"It was, sir.  But not directly."

"But, God bless my soul, you didn't expect to get a snake like the
Lambton worm, did you?  Why, a mongoose, to tackle a monster like that--if
there were one--would have to be bigger than a haystack."

"These were ordinary snakes, about as big as a walking-stick."