d me to dine with him. After the meal,
while we were smoking, reclining in some cocoanut fibre hammocks
swung in the shade of the palace court yard, I saw a man servant lead
a dog through the square, and down a narrow passage way through the
rear of the palace.

"Would you like to see the 'Green Devil' eat?" my host asked.

I have translated the native words he used by the term "green devil,"
because that represents the idea of the original better than any
other words I know of, I had not the slightest conception as to who
or what the individual referred to might be; but I said at once that
I would be very glad indeed to see him eat.

My host swung out of the hammock,--he was a superbly strong and
vigorous man, now that he was in health again,--and led the way
through the passage. Following him I found myself in another court
yard, larger than the first, and with more trees in it. Beneath one
of these trees, in a stout cage of bamboo, was the biggest python
I ever saw. He must have been fully twenty-five feet long. The cage
was large enough to give the snake a chance to move about in it, and
when we came in sight he was rolling from one end to the other with
head erect, eyes glistening, and the light shimmering on his glossy
scales in a way which made it easy to see why he had been given his
name. I learned later that he had not been fed for a month, and that
he would not be fed again until another month had passed. Like all
of his kind he would touch none but live food.

The wretched dog, who seemed to guess the fate in store for him,
hung back in the rope tied about his neck, and crouched flat to the
ground, too frightened even to whine.

The servant unlocked a door in the side of the cage and thrust the
poor beast in. I am not ashamed to say that I turned my head away. It
was only a dog, but it might have been a human being, so far as the
reptile, or the half-savage man at my side, would have cared.

When I looked again, the dog was only a crushed mass of bones and
flesh, about which the snake was still winding and tightening coil
after coil.

"We need not wait," the Sultan said. "It will be an hour before he
will swallow the food. You can come out again."

I did as he suggested. It was a wonder to me, as it is to every one,
how a snake's throat can be distended enough to swallow whole an object
so large as this dog, but in some way the reptile had accomplished the
feat. The meal over, the huge creature had