“Oh, my fingers are too hard to burn,” growled the carpenter, ignoring the notion of the danger being from the serpents; and he applied the burning match to three places, letting the flame drop in the last, before he stepped quickly back, watching the bright crackling flare which rose in each spot where he had applied the match and then began to run together to form one blaze.
“Why, there’s nothing there,” cried Poole.
“Oh, yes, there is, gen’lemen, and they’re beginning to feel it. It’s so nice and warm that—Look, they are pulling their tails in under the blanket to get their share. Now they says it’s too hot. Look out; here they come.”
The warning was not needed, for there was a sharp, fierce hissing heard plainly above the spluttering crackle of the burning husks, the pile was violently agitated, and then the burning heap was heaved up and scattered about in various directions, while, half-hidden by the smoke, it seemed as if a couple of pieces of stout Manilla cable were being furiously shaken upon the earthen floor.
“Murder!” shouted Poole, starting back from the window where he stood, his action being involuntarily imitated by Fitz, who just caught a glance of the snake that had startled his companion passing like a flash over the window-sill, and making at what seemed to be an impossible speed for a clump of bushes close at hand.
“That’s one of them,” cried Fitz breathlessly. “What about the other?”
Bang! Bang! Thud! Thud! came from inside the room, and then the answer in the carpenter’s gruff voice—
“I got him at last,” he said. “He was a lively one. Reg’lar dodger. Come and look here. It’s all right; he’s done. My! He is a whopper!”
The inclination to look in was not great, but the boys stepped back at once to the windows they had left, to see that the burning heap was well alight, but apparently all in motion, while the carpenter was standing near, half-hidden by smoke, pressing the end of the joist he had used down upon a writhing serpent which he was holding pinned against the earth in the middle of the flames.
“Take care! Take care!” cried Poole. “It’ll be furious if it gets from underneath that piece of wood.”