![]() His speculation suggests that Doyle might have hidden a double-meaning in Holmes' words. Watson for getting the name of the snake wrong, a theory that the swamp adder was an artificial hybrid between the Mexican Gila monster ( Heloderma suspectum) and Naja naja. The herpetologist Laurence Monroe Klauber proposed, in a tongue-in-cheek article which blames Dr. The bell cord had rotted away, but by means of a stick he manages to ring it and raise the alarm. Unable to cry out for help, the captain spots an old bell that hung from a projecting beam above one of the windows. He is paralysed with fear as the serpent comes down into the room. It turns out to be the largest Boa constrictor he has seen (more likely a python because there are no boas in Africa). On the first night in the cabin, he is awoken by a creaking sound, and sees 'a dark queer-looking thing hanging down through the ventilator above it'. In the article, a captain tells how he was dispatched to a remote camp in West Africa to stay in a tumbledown cabin that belonged to a Portuguese trader. A West African Adventure' in Cassell's Saturday Journal, published in February 1891. Richard Lancelyn Green, the editor of the 2000 Oxford paperback edition of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, surmises that Doyle's source for the story appears to have been the article named 'Called on by a Boa Constrictor. Holmes admits his attack on the snake may make him indirectly responsible for Roylott's demise, but he doesn't foresee it troubling him, since his action saved Helen's life. Roylott plotted to remove both of his stepdaughters before they married to avoid losing most of the fortune he controlled when the daughters took with them their share of money left for them by their mother. Holmes identifies the snake as an Indian swamp adder and reveals to Watson the motive: the late wife's will had provided an annual income of ₤750 sterling, of which each daughter could claim one third upon marriage. Agitated, it fatally attacks Roylott, who had been waiting for it to return after killing Helen. He strikes at the snake with his walking stick, driving it back through the ventilator. Quickly lighting a candle, he discovers on the bell cord the 'speckled band'-a venomous snake. In darkness they wait until about three in the morning suddenly, a slight metallic noise and a dim light through the ventilator prompt Holmes to action. Holmes and Watson arrange to spend the night in Helen's room. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |