AMBROSE BIERCE’S
“THE
MAN AND THE SNAKE”
It is of veritabyll report, and attested of so
many that there be nowe of wyse and learned none to gaynsaye it, that ye
serpente hys eye hath a magnetick propertie that whosoe falleth into its suasion
is drawn forwards in despite of his wille, and perisheth miserabyll by ye
creature hys byte.
Stretched at ease upon a sofa, in gown and slippers, Harker Brayton smiled as he read the forgoing sentence in old Morryster’s “Marvells of Science.” “The only marvel in the matter,” he said to himself, “is that the wise and learned in Morryster’s day should have believed such nonsense as is rejected by most of even the ignorant in ours.”
A train of reflection followed—for Brayton was a man of thought—and
he unconsciously lowered his book without altering the direction of his eyes.
As soon as the volume had gone below the line of sight, something in an
obscure corner of the room recalled his attention to his surroundings.
What he saw, in the shadow under his bed, were two small points of light,
apparently about an inch apart. They
might have been reflections of the gas jet above him, in metal nail heads;
he gave them but little thought and resumed his reading. A moment later something—some impulse which it did not
occur to him to analyze—impelled him to lower his book again and seek for what
he saw before. The points of light
were still there. They seemed to
have become brighter than before, shining with a greenish luster which he had
not at first observed. He thought,
too, that they might have moved a trifle—were somewhat nearer. They were still too much in the shadow, however, to reveal
their nature and origin to an indolent attention, and he resumed his reading.
Suddenly something in the text suggested a thought which made him start
and drop the book for the third time to the side of the sofa, whence, escaping
from his hand, it fell sprawling to the floor, back upward.
Brayton, half-risen, was staring intently into the obscurity beneath the
bed, where the points of light shone with, it seemed to him, an added fire.
His attention was now fully aroused, his gaze eager and imperative.
It disclosed, almost directly beneath the footrail of the bed, the coils
of a large serpent—the points of light were its eyes!
Its horrible head, thrust flatly forth from the innermost coil and
resting upon the outermost, was directed straight toward him, the definition of
the wide, brutal jaw and the idiotlike forehead serving to show the direction of
its malevolent gaze. The eyes were
no longer merely luminous points; they looked into his own with a meaning, a
malign significance.
A snake in a bedroom of a modern city dwelling of the better sort is,
happily, not so common a phenomenon as to make explanation altogether needless.
Harker Brayton, a bachelor of thirty-five, a scholar, idler, and
something of an athlete, rich, popular, and of sound health, had returned to San
Francisco from all manner of remote and unfamiliar countries.
His tastes, always a trifle luxurious, had taken on an added exuberance
from long privation; and the resources of even the Castle Hotel being inadequate
for their perfect gratification, he had gladly accepted the hospitality of his
friend, Dr. Druring, the distinguished scientist.
Dr. Druring’s house, a large, old-fashioned one in what was now an
obscure quarter of the city, had an outer and visible aspect of reserve.
It plainly would not associate with the contiguous elements of its
altered environment, and appeared to have developed some of the eccentricities
which come of isolation. One of
these was a “wing,” conspicuously irrelevant in point of architecture, and
no less rebellious in the matter of purpose; for it was a combination of
laboratory, menagerie, and museum. It
was here that the doctor indulged the scientific side of his nature in the study
of such forms of animal life as engaged his interest and comforted his
taste—which, it must be confessed, ran rather to the lower forms. For one of the higher types nimbly and sweetly to recommend
itself unto his gentle senses, it had at least to retain certain rudimentary
characteristics allying it to such “dragons of the prime” as toads and
snakes. His scientific sympathies
were distinctly reptilian; he loved nature’s vulgarians and described himself
as the Zola of zoology. His wife
and daughters, not having the advantage to share his enlightened curiosity
regarding the works and ways of our ill-starred fellow-creatures, were, with
needles austerity, excluded from what he called the Snakery, and doomed to
companionship with their own kind; though, to soften the rigors of their lot, he
had permitted them, out of his great wealth, to outdo the reptiles in the
gorgeousness of their surroundings and to shine with a superior splendor.
Architecturally, and in point of “furnishing,” the Snakery had a
severe simplicity befitting the humble circumstances of its occupants, many of
whom, indeed, could not safely have been intrusted with the liberty which is
necessary to the full enjoyment of luxury, for they had the troublesome
peculiarity of being alive. In
their own apartments, however, they were under as little personal restraint as
was compatible with their protection from the baneful habit of swallowing one
another; and, as Brayton had thoughtfully been apprised, it was more than a
tradition that some of them had at divers times been found in parts of the
premises where it would have embarrassed them to explain their presence.
Despite the Snakery and its uncanny associations—to which, indeed, he
gave little attention—Brayton found life at the Druring mansion very much to
his mind.
Beyond a smart shock of surprise and a shudder of mere loathing, Mr.
Brayton was not greatly affected. His
first thought was to ring the call bell and bring a servant; but, although the
bell cord dangled within easy reach, he made no movement toward it; it had
occurred to his mind that the act might subject him to the suspicion of fear,
which he certainly did not feel. He
was more keenly conscious of the incongruous nature of the situation than
affected by its perils; it was revolting, but absurd.
The reptile was of a species with which Brayton was unfamiliar.
Its length he could only conjecture; the body at the largest visible part
seemed about as think as his forearm. In
what way was it dangerous, if in any way? Was
it venomous? Was it a constrictor?
His knowledge of nature’s danger signals did not enable him to say; he
had never deciphered the code.
If not dangerous, the creature was at least offensive.
It was de trop—“matter out of place”—an impertinence.
The gem was unworthy of the setting.
Even the barbarous taste of our time and country, which had loaded the
walls of the room with pictures, the floor with furniture, and the furniture
with bric-a-brac, had not quite fitted the place for this bit of the
savage life of the jungle. Besides—insupportable
thought!—the exhalations of its breath mingled with the atmosphere which he
himself was breathing!
These thoughts shaped themselves with greater or less definition in
Brayton’s mind, and begot action. The
process is what we call consideration and decision.
It is thus that we are wise and unwise.
It is thus that the withered leaf in an autumn breeze shows greater or
less intelligence than its fellows, falling upon the land or upon the lake. The secret of human action is an open one—something
contracts our muscles. Does it
matter if we give to the preparatory molecular changes the name of will?
Brayton rose to his feet and prepared to back softly away from the snake,
without disturbing it, if possible, and through the door.
People retire so from the presence of the great, for greatness is power,
and power is a menace. He knew that
he could walk backward without obstruction, and find the door without error.
Should the monster follow, the taste which had plastered the walls with
paintings had consistently supplied a rack of murderous Oriental weapons from
which he could snatch one so [sic] suit the occasion.
In the meantime, the snake’s eyes burned with a more pitiless
malevolence than ever.
Brayton lifted his right foot free of the floor to step backward.
That moment he felt a strong aversion to doing so.
“I am accounted brave,” he murmured; “is bravery, then, no more
than pride? Because there are none to witness the shame shall I retreat?”
He was steadying himself with his right hand upon the back of a chair,
his foot suspended.
“Nonsense!” he said aloud; “I am not so great a coward as to fear
to seem to myself afraid.”
He lifted the foot a little higher by slightly bending the knee, and
thrust it sharply to the floor—an inch in front of the other!
He could not think how that had occurred.
A trial with the left foot had the same result; it was again in advance
of the right. The hand upon the
chair back was grasping it; the arm was straight, reaching somewhat backward. One might have seen that he was reluctant to lose his hold.
The snake’s malignant head was still thrust forth from the inner coil
as before, the neck level. It had not moved, but its eyes were now electric sparks,
radiating an infinity of luminous needles.
The man had an ashy pallor. Again
he took a step forward, and another, partly dragging the chair, which, when
finally released, fell upon the floor with a crash.
The man groaned; the snake made neither sound nor motion, but its eyes
were two dazzling suns. The reptile
itself was wholly concealed by them. They gave off enlarging rings of rich and
vivid colors, which at their greatest expansion successively vanished like soap
bubbles; they seemed to approach his very face, and anon were an immeasurable
distance away. He heard, somewhere,
the continual throbbing of a great drum, with desultory bursts of far music,
inconceivably sweet, like the tones of an Aeolian harp.
He knew it for the sunrise melody of Memnon’s statue, and thought he
stood in the Nileside reeds, hearing, with exalted sense, that immortal anthem
through the silence of the centuries.
The music ceased; rather, it became by insensible degrees the distant
roll of a retreating thunderstorm. A
landscape, glittering with sun and rain, stretched before him, arched with a
vivid rainbow, framing in its giant curve a hundred visible cities.
In the middle distance a vast serpent, wearing a crown, reared its head
out of its voluminous convolutions and looked at him with his dead mother’s
eyes. Suddenly this enchanting
landscape seemed to rise swiftly upward, like the drop scene at a theater, and
vanished in a blank. Something
struck him a hard flow upon the face and breast.
He had fallen to the floor; the blood ran from his broken nose and his
bruised lips. For a moment he was
dazed and stunned, and lay with closed eyes, his face against the door. In a few moments he had recovered, and then realized that his
fall, by withdrawing his eyes, had broken the spell which held him.
He felt that now, by keeping his gaze averted, he would be able to
retreat. But the thought of the
serpent within a few feet of his head, yet unseen—perhaps in the very act of
springing upon him and throwing its coils about his throat—was too horrible.
He lifted his head, stared again into those baleful eyes, and was again
in bondage.
Now ensued a fearful scene. The
man, prone upon the floor, within a yard of his enemy, raised the upper part of
his body upon his elbows, his head thrown back, his legs extended to their full
length. His face was white between its gouts of blood; his eyes were
strained open to their uttermost expansion.
There was froth upon his lips; it dropped off in flakes.
Strong convulsions ran through his body, making almost serpentine
undulations. He bent himself at the
waist, shifting his legs from side to side.
And every movement left him a little nearer to the snake.
He thrust his hands forward to brace himself back, yet constantly
advanced upon his elbows.
Dr. Druring and his wife sat in the library.
The scientist was in rare good humor.
“I have just obtained, by exchange with another collector,” he said,
“a splendid specimen of the Ophiophagus.”
“And what may that be?” the lady inquired with a somewhat languid
interest.
“Why, bless my soul, what profound ignorance!
My dear, a man who ascertains after marriage that his wife does not know
Greek, is entitled to a divorce. The
Ophiophagus is a snake which eats other snakes.”
“I hope it will eat all yours,” she said, absently shifting the lamp.
“That is just like you, dear,” said the doctor, with an affection of
petulance. “You know how
irritating to me is any allusion to that vulgar superstition about the snake’s
power of fascination.”
The conversation was interrupted by a mighty cry which rang through the
silent house like the voice of a demon shouting in a tomb.
Again and yet again it sounded, with terrible distinctness.
They sprang to their feet, the man confused, the lady pale and speechless
with fright. Almost before the
echoes of the last cry had died away the doctor was out of the room, springing
up the staircase two steps at a time. In the corridor, in front of Brayton’s chamber, he met some
servants who had come from the upper floor.
Together, they rushed at the door without knocking.
It was unfastened, and gave way. Brayton
lay upon his stomach on the floor, dead. His
head and arms were partly concealed under the foot rail of the bed.
They pulled the body away, turning it upon the back.
The face was daubed with blood and froth, the eyes were wide open,
staring—a dreadful sight!
“Died in a fit,” said the scientist, bending his knee and placing his
hand upon the heart. While in that position he happened to glance under the bed.
“Good God!” he added; “how did this thing get in here?”
He reached under the bed, pulled out the snake, and flung it, still
coiled, to the center of the room, whence, with a harsh, shuffling sound, it
slid across the polished floor till stopped by a wall where it lay without
motion. It was a stuffed snake; its
eyes were two shoe buttons.