“Sammy do it. Sure. Sammy yell like panther, eh?”
“No, Sammy won’t yell like a panther. Sammy will keep quiet like a f-f-fish till I get through.”
Sammy showed his white teeth, and I could almost hear him purr. It tickled him all over every time Mark spoke to him, and it didn’t make any difference what he said, either.
“You got to pretend you’re a rattlesnake,” says Mark. “Go quiet as you can to the shore wherever they try to land. Hide so’s they can’t see you. Then as soon’s one of ’em puts a f-f-foot ashore you rattle. Understand?”
“Sammy know. To be sure. Sammy go kr-r-r-r-r-r.”
I jumped and looked around before I thought. It was the rattlesnakiest noise you ever heard.
“That’s it,” says Mark. “Now hurry!”
Mark stayed where he was because he couldn’t move very quiet. No matter how careful and still he tried to be, he would have sounded like a cow mired in a swamp. There are good things about being fat, but there are bad ones, too, and that was one of the bad ones. I went along with Sammy as far as I dared and then hid behind some bushes. Sammy crawled along to the very edge of the water and kept even with the boat, which had come into sight and was rowing along about twenty feet out. From where I was I could hear Batten and Bill talking to each other low and cautious.
“I’m not crazy to go ashore,” says Batten. “That island’s alive with snakes.”
“Bosh!” says Bill. “Who’s afraid of snakes?”