"Do come here, cousin," said he, "there is the largest king-snake I ever saw, and desperately angry. The dogs have driven him into a thicket of briers, and he is fighting as if he had the venom of a thousand serpents in his fangs. His eyes actually flash. I cut a stick and tried to kill him, but it was too short, and he struck at me so venomously, that I concluded to cut me a longer one. The most curious part of the business is, that there is a large grasshopper or locust (if I may judge from the sound), in the same thicket, making himself very merry with the fight. There he is now--do you not hear him? singing away as if he would crack his sides."
"Locust!" exclaimed Harold, as soon as his quick ear distinguished the character of the music, "you do not call that a locust. Why, Robert, it is the rattle of a rattle-snake. Did you never hear one before?"
"Never in my life," he replied. "I have often seen their skins and rattles, but never a live rattle-snake. O, Harold," he said, shuddering, "what a narrow escape I have made. That fellow struck so near me twice, as barely to miss my clothes."
The boys obtained each a pole of ten feet in length. They stood on opposite sides of the narrow thicket in which the venomous reptile was making its defence, and as it moved, in striking, to the one side or the other, they aimed their blows, until it was stunned by a fortunate stroke from Robert, and fell writhing amid the leaves and herbage. The moment the blow took effect, Mum, whose eyes were lighted with fiery eagerness, sprang upon the body, seized it by the middle, shook it violently, then dropped and shook it again. It was now perfectly dead. They drew it out, and stretched it on the ground. Its body was longer than either of theirs, and as large around as Robert's leg. The fangs, which he shuddered to behold, were half as long as his finger, and crooked, like the nails of a cat, and the rattles were sixteen in number.
"This is an old soldier," said Harold; "he is seventeen or eighteen years of age. Had we not better carry it to the boat that Mary and Frank may see it? It is well for all to be able to distinguish a rattle-snake when it is met."
The precaution was necessary. For though Mary had a salutary fear of all reptiles, Frank had not; he would as soon have played with a snake, as with a lizard or a worm; and these last he would oftentimes hold in his hand, admiring what he considered their beauty. They stretched it on the earth before the children; put it into its coil ready for striking; opened its mouth; showed the horrid fangs; and squeezing the poison bag, forced a drop of the green liquid to the end of the tooth.
"Frank," said Harold, "if you meet a snake like this, you had better let him alone. Rattle-snakes never run at people. They are very peaceable and only trouble those that trouble them. But they will not budge out of their way for a king; and if you wrong them, they will give you the point of their fangs, and a drop of their poison, and then you will swell up and die. Do you think that you will play with snakes any more!"
"No, indeed," he replied.
"Harold," said Robert, "do you know how to distinguish a poisonous snake from a harmless one?"
On his replying in the negative, Robert continued, "The poisonous serpents, I am told, may be usually known by their having broad angular heads, and short stumpy tails. That rattlesnake answers exactly to the description, and I wonder at myself for not having put my knowledge to better use when I met him. The only exception to this rule I know of is the spreading adder, which is of the same shape, but harmless. Poisonous serpents must have fangs, and a poison bag. These must be somewhere in the head, without being part of the jaws themselves. This addition to the head gives to it a broad corner on each side, different from that of a snake which has no fangs. But if ever you see a thick set snake with a broad head and a short stumpy tail, take care."