The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 312: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE TIGER 283 hands relaxed their hold upon the branches, and he nearly fell, when he clutched them convulsively again. As a man looks down with consternation and with a cold, creeping feeling of the flesh into the depth of a tremendous gulf, so looked down the Burker from amidst the foliage of the tree at the scene that was taking place below. The coils of the immense snake had been flung around the tiger just at the very moment it was springing upward in the hope of reaching the Burker, and thus the reptile’s deadly folds had circled the fore legs of the animal, pinioning them as it were to its neck. The tiger fell down, and by means of his hind legs, as well as with the convulsing litheness and elasticity of its body, it plunged and writhed and made the most desperate efforts to escape from its fearful enemy. But all in vain. The boa-constrictor had its tail coiled tight around the branch from which it had thrown itself, and not more securely is a ship kept at anchor by its cable than that tiger was held fast by the supple length of the snake. At first terrific howls and cries of anguish burst from the tiger’s mouth, but these soon ceased, for the constricting folds circled its neck as well as all the fore part of its body; and those folds were tightened with all their terrific power, until the captured brute was compelled to desist from its howlings by the sense of strangulation. The snake seemed to have done enough for the present, or else, with a hideous malignity, it purposed to play with its victim ere completely despatching it; or else, perhaps, conscious how completely the tiger lay in its power, it wished to ascertain to what extent the brute’s efforts might go to release itself from the binding coils. At all events the snake remained quiet, when the tiger, exhausted by its ineffectual endeavours to escape from the folds, lay motionless as if dead. The Burker had desperately clutched the branches in order to retain himself in the tree, and looking down, he observed all that we have been describing. He could see the head of the reptile lying flat upon the tiger’s back, close by the side of its own last slimy fold, and the eyes, small, shining like diamonds, but with a dread sinister light, seemed to be looking up at the man in the tree. Cold and horrible was the shudder which swept through the Burker’s form as he wondered within himself why the snake had not attacked him in preference to the tiger. He knew not GOMuIGdOG Ss) (CO)