“It means just the same, though,” I said. “All the birds are saying the same thing, only they say it in different languages.”
I must explain that Eva has been somewhat of a traveller, and realises that you can ask for the same thing in English, French, or Italian. Therefore, the explanation seemed to bring her some, though I could see not entire, conviction.
However, I was saved further embarrassment by our arriving at our scene of operations. Really I don’t know which of us was more quietly excited as we stood in front of the bank where the angry little prisoner churned his venom in the darkness. Eva, who had been given an illustrated natural history for a present the Christmas before, was evidently expecting a boa constrictor—that, or a beautiful serpent, such as a luridly pictured Bible sent her by a pious aunt had taught her to associate with the garden of Eden.
With almost as much caution as though Eva’s imaginations were likely to be realised, and some winged dragon snorting flame was ready to leap out upon us, I removed the stone and peered into the tiny dungeon, Eva standing at my side, her blue eyes serious with expectancy. Yes, my prisoner was still there! Apparently he had not moved since I had shut him in, and his small wicked eyes gleamed at me with concentrated hate out of the darkness. He showed no disposition to escape, so there was no difficulty in my using my glass pickle jar, as I had proposed to myself when I stole with it from the kitchen.
Placing its broad mouth in the entrance to the little cave, I banked it securely round with earth; Eva, meanwhile, an admiring, mystified spectator. Thus the adder had no choice but to stay where he was or to remove into the glass jar, the hospitality of which, however, he showed no disposition to accept. He still sat on, mystic, unmoving, making no sign. Eva and I watched him a long while in silence, and then at length, his immobility growing monotonous, I cut a stout twig from a neighbouring bush, and, pushing it through the soft earth at the side of the jar, poked him gently with it. Even then he would not stir, but his black tongue went in and out of his tiny jaws like black lightning. There was something quite pathetic in his miniature fury at this indignity being put upon him.
“My! but he is cross! Isn’t he, Daddy?” exclaimed Eva, peering with me at the angry little creature. Presently he moved farther into the darkness, away from the tormenting twig, but, as it could still reach him there, his patience at last became exhausted, and suddenly he had uncoiled himself and was gliding, with all the grace of his evil beauty, into the glass jar.
Eva gave a little scream of delight and clapped her hands. “O isn’t he pretty?” she cried. “Let me take hold of him.” Snakes were evidently among the multitude of things of which Eva knows no fear. However, as Eva is not Saint Paul—though in my heart I had a feeling that her courageous innocence would have protected her—I had to deny her that indulgence; one of the few I ever denied her, for I know of few with which she is not strong enough to be intrusted—though that, I suppose, is a father’s point of view.
As we went down the wood with our captive securely shut in his glass cage, I explained to Eva why it was just as well not to hold snakes in your hand, and when we reached my log hut I illustrated my explanation by the old familiar method. Cutting a forked stick from a tree hard by, I set the jar down on the grass, and when the adder, believing that freedom had come at last, began to glide through the loophole I had made for him, I pinned him down to the earth at the back of his wicked head. In vain he lashed his body like a silver whip with rage; and while I thus held him I took my penknife and forced open his cruel mouth, so that Eva could see his evil forked tongue. Then we let him go back into his bottle, and dropped green leaves down to him, so that he might feel comfortable, and looked about for beetles and such small insects as we thought might appeal to his appetite and console him for his captivity. But these attentions he received with sullen indifference. Whether it was that he was too angry to eat, or that we had made a mistake in his diet, our limited knowledge of natural history did not enable us to decide.
Nor were we left much more time to consider; for, suddenly as we knelt together side by side on the grass, our eyes intent on our captive, and the alarmed scrambling of the various small insects tumbling over each other to get out of his way, we heard a voice behind us.