“Lots of them.  I never put myself up as a crack riata man, and I am out of practice now, but I can lay the noose on the ground at my feet and kick it around your neck, or pick it off the ground from my horse and land it around you while the horse is going at full speed, and do lots of things like that, but none of them is any good.  That backthrow has been used by the Mexican highwaymen to considerable advantage.  You see, in that country the traveler always looks out for danger from the rear and is prepared for it, but when a pleasant horseman rides past him, playing with his riata, and wishing him ‘Good-day’ as he passes, he is likely to consider the danger as gone by, as well as the man.  That has caused the death of a good many.  The bandit gets the right distance ahead and then lassoes him as I did you.  A touch of his spur jerks his victim from the saddle and that ends it.”

“How is the lasso as a weapon of defence?”

“Good.  A quick riata man can beat a fellow with a pistol at fairly close quarters.”

“How?”

“Well, here is a pistol.  Put it in your pocket and draw it on me as I come toward you.”

The reporter did as he was directed.  He had not raised the weapon when the noose was around his hand and the pistol was jerked a dozen feet.

“Try again, and tighter,” said Ohnimus.

The reporter did so.  The pistol was not jerked from his hand this time, but before he could snap it Ohnimus had thrown a coil around his neck and pulled his pistol hand up over his shoulder.  In another instant a second coil was around the reporter’s body, and both arms were fastened firmly to his sides.  He could not move that pistol an inch.  No clearer demonstration of the use of the lasso as a weapon of defence was possible.

“What is the most difficult animal, in your opinion, to catch with the lasso?” was asked.

“A sea lion,” answered the rope thrower.  “I have caught them off the southern coast.  They go right through a noose.  The only way to get them is to throw the rope around his neck and back of one flipper.  A hog is hard to catch, too.  He pulls his legs out of a noose without half trying, and you can’t hold him by the neck or body.  The only way is to get him like the sea lion—­back of one foreleg.”

A WATERSPOUT.

Doubtless many of my readers have heard of the dreadful encounters of vessels with waterspouts, when the ship escaped destruction by firing a cannon-ball into the waterspout, thus causing it to break apart.

Now these things are by no means such terrible objects as many believe.  No doubt the vessels of the present day are larger and stronger than formerly, and perhaps waterspouts have become smaller.  Be as it may, the people who go down to the sea in ships need give themselves no uneasiness about them, for really they amount to little.