Читать книгу Munchausen XX онлайн

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But, behold my horror! For now he had coiled himself firmly, and while holding me some twenty or thirty feet from the ground was proceeding to draw me into his cavernous throat, in spite of my frenzied efforts to combat him.

My horror did not reach its climax until I found my head and shoulders surely entering the terrible maw.

It makes me all goose-fleshed to think of it—it was a terrible experience. Finally he had swallowed me, and I fell with a slippery thud to the point where his body was coiled upon the ground.

I was still vigorous and was struggling desperately; so much so that the serpent seemed to be suddenly filled with a great questioning as to whether he had not made a serious mistake.

In threshing around within this cave my hand struck something which I quickly ascertained to be the package I had sought. I hugged it tightly to my breast, for the moment forgetting my danger.

The air was becoming stifling, as you may well imagine, and I soon became desperate. I ran my hands through all my pockets, in a vain search for my knife which I had left somewhere. The only thing I found was a mouth-organ. I scratched the wall of his stomach with this most fiendishly, but it had no effect.