“Ah, you’re a-laughing at me, sir,” said the big sailor, shaking his head. “I know, sir, though you’re a-pretending to look as serious as a judge.”
“Enough to make me look serious, Tom. But are you sure that any of the restless ones didn’t slip down after you before you shut the door?”
“Eh? What, sir?” whispered the man hurriedly.
“You don’t think as—” He looked behind and round about him, before continuing. “Why, of course I am, sir. You’re a-making fun of a fellow, sir. But if you’d been up yonder and heered ’em—”
“I should have poked about with the barrel of my musket and found that the rustling was made by birds or rats.”
“Nay, sir,” said the man confidently, “’twarn’t neither o’ they things. If it had been they’d ha’ skilly wiggled away at once. And besides, sir, they wouldn’t ha’ made a man feel so ’orrid squirmy like. I felt all of a shudder; that’s what made me know that they were something as didn’t ought to be.”
“Snakes, perhaps, Tom.”
The man started, stared, snatched off his straw hat, and gave his head a vicious rub, before having another good look back at the thatch-roofed summer-house of a place.
“Say, Mr Murray, sir,” he said at last, “did you say snakes?”
“Yes, Tom; perhaps poisonous ones.”