As may well be supposed, the pure sea breezes and wholesome diet, the peace and plenty, and motherly influence of nature, the due exercise of the body, without undue stagnation of mind, the pleasure of finding knowledge expand every day, stomachically, while body and mind were girded alike, and the heart impressed with the diamond–studded belt of hope—all this, we may well suppose, was beginning to try severely the nasal joints of incessant woe.
CHAPTER XII.
But Pomona Island, now and then, had its own little cares and anxieties. How much longer was Cradock Nowell to live upon fruit, and fish, and turtle, with ship–biscuit for dessert? When would the trader come for his goods, or had he quite forgotten them? What would Amy and Uncle John think, if the Taprobane went home without him? And the snakes, the snakes, that cared not a rap for the enmity of man, since the rainy season set in, but came almost up to be roasted! And worst of all and most terrible thing, Crad was obliged to go about barefooted, while the thorns were of natureʼs invention, and went every way all at once, like a hedgehog upon a frying–pan.
For that last evil he found a cure before he had hopped many hundred yards. He discovered a pumpkin about a foot long, pointed, and with a horny rind, and contracted towards the middle. He sliced this lengthwise, and took out the seeds, and planted his naked foot there. The coolness was most delicious, and a few strips of baobab bark made a first–rate shoe of it. He wore out one pair every day, and two when he went exploring; but what did that matter, unless the supply failed? and he kept some hung up for emergency.
As to the snakes, though he did not find out the snake–wood, or the snake–stone, or the fungoid substance, like a morel, which pumices up the venom; he invented something much better, as prevention is better than cure. He discovered a species of aspalathus, perfectly smooth near the root, and not very hard to pull up, yet so barbed, and toothed, and fanged upon all except the seed–leaves, that even a python—whereof he had none—could scarcely have got through it. Of this he strewed a ring all round his great mowana–tree, and then a fenced path down the valley toward his bathing–place, and then he defied the whole of that genus so closely akin to the devil.
But Wena had saved his life ere this from one of those slimy demons. Of course we know how hateful it is to hate anything at all, except sin and crime in the abstract; but I do hope a fellow may be forgiven for hating snakes and scorpions. At any rate, if he cannot be, he ought to be able to help it. While Cradock was making his fence aspalathine, and before he had finished the ring yet, a little snake about two feet long, semi–transparent, and jellified, of a dirty bottle–green colour, like the caterpillar known as the pear–leech (Selandria Æthiops), only some hundreds of sizes bigger, that loathsome reptile sneaked in through and crouched in a corner, while Cradock thought that he smelled something very nasty, as he smoked a pipe of the traderʼs tobacco, before turning into his locker.
He had cut himself a good broad coving from the inside of the mowana–tree, about three feet from the ground, fitted up with a flap and a pillow–place, and strewn with fresh plantain–leaves. Across the niche he had fastened a new mosquito net, borrowed from his friend the trader, whose goods he began to look upon now as placed under his trusteeship. And in that rude couch he slept as snugly, after a hard dayʼs work, as the pupa does of the goat moth, or of the giant sirex. Under his feet was Wenaʼs hole, wherein she crouched like a rabbit, and pricked her ears every now and then, and barked if ever the wind moaned. Fortunatos nimium; there was nobody to rogue them.
And yet no sooner was Craddy asleep, upon the night I am telling of, than that dirty bottle–green snake, flat–headed, and with a yearʼs supply of venom in its tooth–bag, came wriggling on its dappled belly around the hollow ring, while the dying embers of the fire—for the night was rather chilly and wet, and Cradock had cooked some fish—showed the mean sneak, poking its head up, feeling the temper of the time, ready to wriggle to anything. Then it came to the bedposts of Cradockʼs couch, which he had cut, in a dry sort of humour, from the soft baobab wood. It lifted its head, and heard him snoring, and tapped its tail, and listened again. Very likely it was warm up there, and the snake was a little chilly, in this depth of the winter. So without any evil forethought—for I must be just, even to a snake—though ready to bite, at a move or a turn, of the animal known as “man,” up went that little serpent, cleverly and elegantly, as on a Bohemian vase. Cradock would have died in two hours after that snake had bitten him. But before that lissom coil of death had got all its tail off the ground, fangs as keen as its own, though not poisonous, had it by the nape of the neck. Wena knew a snake by this time, and could treat them aright. She gave the devilish miscreant not a chance to twist upon her, but tore him from his belly–hold, and walked pleasantly to the fire, and with a spit of execration threw him into it, and ran back, and then ran to again, and barked at the noise he made in fizzing. Therewith Cradock awoke, and got out of bed, and saw the past danger, and coaxed the little dog, and kissed her, and talked to her about Amy, whose name she knew quite as well as her own.