IV.
ABOUT SNAKES.
There were plenty of things in the Wonga-Wonga garden, but they were not arranged very tidily. It was hard to say where the beds ended, and the paths began; and near the bottom fence there was a patch that was exceedingly slovenly. In the midst of loquat trees and peach trees, and ninety-days’ corn, and sweet potatoes, and golden-blossomed pumpkin vines, there was a coarse grass-plat, almost as big as a little paddock. A clump of prickly pear grew in it, and one great aloe, with names cut on some of its pointed leaves, and the ends of others hacked off as if they were sword-bayonets broken in receiving a charge of cavalry. And yet the grass-plat looked cosy too—shut in with fruit and flowers and vegetables and green corn, or blossoming corn, or brown corn hanging down great heavy cobs, like truncheons with brass-headed nails driven close together into them, and with the hot Australian sunshine pouring down on the long dry tangled grass. Bees buzzed about over it, and butterflies, with white drops on their black velvet wings, found out its flowers, and the pumpkins, squashes, cucumbers, vegetable marrows, and rock and water-melons were fond of crawling into the hay-like grass, to bulge out and ripen into gold and bloomy green, and speckled green and yellow. The guinea-fowl and turkeys were very fond of laying their eggs in the grass-plat too; and in late spring and summer, and early autumn, snakes were very fond of it also. Up-country people in Australia get careless about snakes, as colliers in England get careless about fire-damp and choke-damp—just because they may be killed by them any day.
One day Mrs. Lawson put on her sun-bonnet, with a curtain that came half-way down her back, and went to the grass-plat to look for eggs, and Harry went with her. All of a sudden she started up with a great black snake coiled round her arm. Though Harry was a slapdash little fellow, he could be cool enough sometimes. The instant he saw what was the matter he darted at the snake before it could bite, just like a snake when it springs, as stiff and as straight as an arrow, and caught it round the throat so tightly with both hands, that it could not put its horrid fangs either into them or into his mother’s arm. Mrs. Lawson didn’t shriek, but stood quite still (though her face was very white, both for Harry’s sake and her own), so that the snake might not get a chance to wriggle free: it was lashing about with its nasty tail, and swelling out as if it wanted to burst itself. Harry knew that Sydney was taking an after-breakfast pipe on the verandah, and shouted as loudly as the throttling he was giving the snake would let him:
“Syd, there’s a beastly snake on mamma! I’ve grabbed him.”
All the Lawsons could put this and that together; so, before he rushed to the rescue, Sydney dashed into the keeping-room for the carving-knife. He was not long about it.
“Hold on like grim death,” he said to Harry, when he ran down; and then he sliced through the snake just under Harry’s fingers. The head part gave such a jump that, after all, the horrid fangs nearly went into Mrs. Lawson’s arm, but Harry managed to keep hold of the slippery thing until he could fling it ever so far off; whilst the headless part untwined from his mother’s arm, and writhed about on the ground in a very uncanny fashion. When the head had been smashed with a stone, and kicked up to a great red boil of an ant-hill, and the tail dragged after it, for the ants to pick the bones, both parts still kept twitching every now and then.
“Snakes can’t die outright, you know, until after sundown.” said Harry.
“Confound the beast! He’s made me break my pipe,” said Sydney.
But though they talked in that cool way, they had both hugged their mother like boa-constrictors when she was safe from the black snake; and when she gave over kissing Harry for a minute, Sydney had clapped him on the back, and said that he was proud to have a game little fellow like that for a brother. Harry scarcely knew whether he was more pleased by the kissing or the clapping—although he did not quite relish being called a little fellow.
Black snakes, and all kinds of snakes, swarmed about Wonga-Wonga in warm weather. In cold weather—such cold weather, that is, as they have in Australia—the snakes lie up in holes. They are not very brisk when they first come out in spring. They seem to be rubbing their eyes, so to speak, after their long sleep; but perhaps they are most dangerous then, because they are more likely to let you tread on them, instead of getting out of your way, as they are generally glad enough to do.