them
"old chaps." The latter expression they did not understand, but they
looked grave and puzzled; and probably the newly arrived missionary
learnt, after a little longer experience, that all English manners and
customs are not applicable to India.

The reverse is also true. There is an Indian kind of free-and-easy
manner which is meant to indicate a spirit of friendliness, which is
just as little understood by the Englishman, and which he not
unfrequently imagines to be intentional rudeness, and resents
accordingly.

CHAPTER XLIV

NIGHT ALARMS IN INDIA

Mortality caused by snake-bite. Snakes in the bungalow. The
cobra; how it shows fight. An exciting contest. The
night-watchman; his jingling-stick; his slumber. Village
night-scare. Supposed dacoits. The village _chowdi_: lads
sleeping in it.

It must be confessed that snakes are one of the drawbacks of country
life in India, especially after dark. That they are not an imaginary
source of danger is shown by the tremendous total in the annual
returns of those killed by snakes in British India. Every year this
amounts to about 20,000 people. The returns for the last ten years
show that, in spite of the attempt to wage war against snakes, the
toll of casualties does not diminish. The number of snakes killed in a
recent year, for which Government gave rewards, amounted to 63,719.
But in so vast a country the destruction even of so many would make
little appreciable difference.

Although the cobra is an object of worship, Indians do not become
reconciled to snakes. The cry of _sarp_--"snake"--makes almost as
great excitement as the cry of "fire." You never can be sure where
you may not find a snake. Once when I was coming home in the dark,
there was just light enough to enable me to see a snake travelling up
the steps of the verandah into the bungalow, and I was in time to kill
it before it hid up. The most uncomfortable situation is when you see
a snake go into the house and you cannot find out where he has located
himself. A _krait_, the most deadly snake in India, in the middle of
the day came in at the door of the room in which I was sitting
reading. It seemed surprised to see me, and retired behind the door,
where I quickly slew him. It was remarkable to see the horror of a
cat, who came in just afterwards and saw the dead body of the snake,
and for a week or two afterwards she would not pass through that room.
As we entered t