Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

252 THINKING BLACK
odd flash of lightning for your only candle—oh for one
of Messrs. Bryant & May's best ! (Why is it that the
African says, "Think snake, sight snake"?) A sudden
thought came. What if . Just then, hiss, went the
notorious noise of an unseen "mamba" from a corner of
the dark den, and it's oh, indeed, for a kindly match now,
just now. My heart seemed to stop for repairs. As
though this longing for a lucifer had actually pressed the
invisible button of an electric-light current, flash ! came
another single steel-blue streak of lightning, and there,
plain as a pikestafi", a long green snake showed in the
flash of fire. Atrociously, maddeningly, for one flashing
moment, I sighted my co-occupant of the den, then, back
both man and snake were hurled into the blackness of
that pestiferous gloom. Oh for a kindly lucifer ! thought
I. For who does not know that a snake never really
attacks a man, only bites out of fear, and only because
you have stumbled over him in error. Need I say that,
as that mamba blocked the doorway, I had to tear down
the grass wall for escape, preferring my sheets of rain
to a snake under the other sheets. The blackness makes
you a baby in helplessness, therefore a baby's fancies and
fears flood the brain. Small wonder the negro has such
a sharp sense of hearing, the slightest sound being tell-
tale : " the sharpers," he calls the ears, and surely the
reason is found just here in his negro life, lacking utterly
the adjunct of match or candle. For if we played-out
Europeans hear a noise, then straightway must we blunt
the edge of our sharp ears by striking a light to decide