The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 315: what you’re looking at

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

286 REYNOLDS’ WORKS tiger lay with its mouth open, its tongue lolling out and dabbled with blood. Its green eyes were fixed in a glassy stare, and the constricting power of the reptile gave a continuous oscillating motion to the form of the wild beast itself. Gradually the snake wound its coils completely about the tiger, which thus kept on elongating in the power- ful gripe of each iron fold. The boa proceeded deliberately with the work that it was accomplishing; it had to break the bones in every part of the brute’s body, and thus at length its neck encircling the hinder legs, drew them tight up against the belly of the wild beast. Ribs, legs, backbone all were thus successively crushed, so that at the expiration of a time the tiger presented to the view only one long, shapeless mass. Ever and anon the snake desisted for awhile, as if to rest, or as if to gloat over its triumph and its intended meal. And all this while the Burker remained in the tree, a spectator of the hideous scene. Two mortal hours thus passed from the moment when the snake first flung its coils about the form of the tiger until the point which our description has just reached. Two mortal hours, — they seemed two centuries to the miserable man. Nothing could be more horrible than the sensation produced upon him by the breaking, crashing, and crushing of those bones. He felt as if the snake were coiled around himself, and as if they were his own bones which were thus frightfully yielding to the infernal pressure. Indeed, the world has no language possessing terms strong enough to convey an idea of all the wretch experienced during those two mortal hours. Nothing he had previously known of the horrors of the jungle could be compared to this crowning one. His compulsory vicinage to that mon- strous reptile, measuring at least forty feet in length, was in itself a stupendous horror, but when he heard the bones crash, and, ignorant of the precise habits of the snake, trembled lest it should seek another victim, he felt as if he were about to yell forth in the wild anguish of a maniac. But the reptile had other work to do. Gradually loosening its coils from around the tiger, it began to cover the elongated carcass with a slime which its livid jaws poured forth, its lambent tongue playing the while, and its eyes gleaming in a manner that added fresh details to the unspeakable hideousness of the entire scene. At the same time a most GOmicsdooks (E(©)