The New Noah Read Online Free Page B

stupidity allows it to be: in other words, if you take silly risks you must
expect unpleasant consequences. Sometimes, of course, in the heat of the moment, you take a risk without realizing it, and it is only afterwards that you find out how stupid you were.
    On my second trip to West Africa I met a young man on board the ship, going out there to take up a job on a banana plantation. He confessed to me that the only thing he was really afraid of was
snakes. I told him that snakes were, as a rule, only too anxious to get out of the way, and in any case, they were few and far between, and it was unlikely that he would see many of them. He
appeared greatly encouraged by this information, and promised that while I was up country he would try to get some specimens for me. I thanked him, and forgot all about it.
    When I had made my collection, I travelled down to the coast with it to board the ship. The night before we sailed, my young friend turned up in his car, very excited, to tell me that he had got
the specimens he had promised. He said that on the banana plantation where he worked he had discovered a pit which was full of snakes, and they were all mine, provided I went and got them out!
    Without bothering to inquire what this pit was like, I agreed, and we set off in his car to the plantation. On arrival at his bungalow I found that my friend had invited several other people to
watch my snake hunt. Then, while we were having a drink, I noticed that my friend was searching round for something, and when I asked him what he was looking for he told me it was some rope. I
asked him what he wanted the rope for, and he explained that it was to lower me into the pit with. This made me inquire for the first time what sort of pit it was, for I had imagined something
about thirty feet square and about three feet deep.
    I discovered to my dismay that the pit resembled a large grave, being about twelve feet long, about three feet wide and some ten feet deep. My friend had decided that the only way for me to get
down there was to lower me on the end of a rope, like a pantomime fairy! I hastily explained that in order to catch snakes in a pit like that I would have to have a torch, which I had not got. None
of the other members of the party had a torch either, but my friend solved the problem.
    He tied the big paraffin pressure lamp on to the end of a long string, and explained that he would lower this into the pit with me. I could not protest, for, as my friend rightly pointed out, it
gave a much better light than any torch. Then we all walked out through the moonlit banana plantation towards the pit, and I remember thinking to myself on the way that there was just a chance the
snakes might turn out to be a harmless variety. But when we reached the edge of the pit and lowered the light into it I saw that it was full of baby Gaboon vipers, perhaps one of the most deadly
snakes in West Africa, and all of them seemed very annoyed at being disturbed, and lifted their spade shaped heads and hissed at us.
    Now I had not thought that I would have to go down into the pit with the snakes in order to catch them, and so I was wearing the wrong sort of clothes. Thin trousers and a pair of Plimsoll shoes
are no protection at all against the inch-long fangs of a Gaboon viper. I explained this to my friend, and he very kindly lent me his trousers and shoes, which were quite thick and strong. So, as I
could think of no more excuses, they tied the rope round my waist and started to lower me into the pit.
    I very soon discovered that the rope had been fastened round my waist with a slip-knot, and the lower I got into the pit the tighter grew the slip-knot round my waist, until I could hardly
breathe. Just before I landed at the bottom I called up and told my friends to stop lowering me: I wanted to examine the ground that I was going to land on, to make sure there were no snakes in the
way. The area being clear, I shouted to them to lower