One bright spring morning in September (seasons are turned topsy-turvy, you know, in Australia), Donald had gone down with John Jones’s little boy to pull up some night lines that Harry and Donald had set in the creek, Harry was too lazy to turn out that morning, so Donald had got little Johnny Jones to go with him. Johnny had no shoes or stockings on, and as he ran to pull one of the lines up, he set his bare foot on a sluggish snake, coiled up like a lady’s back-hair, in a hollow of a black log he was clambering over. Up came the flat head and bit Johnny’s great toe, and off the snake wriggled. Poor little Johnny was dreadfully scared, but Donald made him sit down on the log, and tied one of the fishing lines so tightly round the toe that it almost cut to the bone. Then Donald went down on his knees, and sucked the poison out as well as he could, and spat it out on the ground. What with the bite, and the fright, and the tight string, Johnny could not manage to walk. So Donald took him up on his back like a sack, and trotted off to the house with him, and told Mr. Lawson about him. Mr. Lawson at once cut out the bitten part with a sharp pen-knife, and blazed some gunpowder in the hollow, and, except that he had to limp a little for a day or two, Johnny came to no harm. But if it had not been for Donald, very likely his leg would have swelled up, and he would have grown sleepy, and perhaps died, long before the doctor could have been fetched from Jerry’s Town; and when the doctor had come, perhaps he would not have been able to do any good. If “Old Cranky” or any of the black fellows had been on the station, they might have cured Johnny perhaps.
Old Cranky was a half-crazy, transported poacher, whom the squatters paid to wander about their runs, killing dingoes. Though he was half-crazy, he was sharp enough in doing that; and he was a snake-tamer too. He used to carry little ones about in his cabbage-tree hat, and trouser-pockets, and the bosom of his blue blouse, and pull out a bundle of them every now and then like a pocket-handkerchief. He left the fangs in them, and they sometimes bit him, but he had found out something that always cured him at any rate; and the blacks have got something of the same kind.
Some people say that when a stump-lizard has been bitten in a fight with a snake, it eats the leaves of a little herb that prevents the poison from taking effect, and that the blacks and snake-charmers have found out what the herb is. The stump-lizard is a thick spotted brown and blue thing that is very fond of killing snakes; though it is so lazy generally, that when it thinks you want to hurt it, it won’t take the trouble to run away, but only turns round and makes ugly faces at you. To be sure it can give you a nasty bite if you do lay hold of it. The big-headed laughing jackass is very fond, too, of stabbing snakes and breaking their backs with its strong beak. It seems to enjoy the jobbing job, as if it thought that it was only serving them out fairly for eating birds and birds’ eggs. One day Donald shot a snake that was climbing up a tree to a bird’s-nest; and another day he and Harry came upon one that was mesmerizing a lot of little diamond sparrows. Half of it was coiled up like a corkscrew, and the rest went backwards and forwards, like a boat’s tiller when no one has got hold of it; and the little birds kept on coming nearer and nearer, as if they were being drawn into its open mouth. When Harry shied a stick and frightened them away, the snake looked round at him quite savagely before it rustled off.
There were plenty of snakes, as I have said, about Wonga-Wonga. Great black-backed and yellow-backed fellows crawled into the huts sometimes when the men were away, and coiled themselves up in the boots and blankets; and little lithe mud-brown whip-snakes used to pop out their wicked-looking little heads between the planks of the wool-shed, and the house verandah, and the weather-boards of the barn, and then pop in again before a gun could be pointed at them. Whilst the snakes were about, too, it was a hazardous thing to pull a log out of the wood-heap. You might have fancied that Harry and Donald saw enough snakes to keep them from wanting to hear about any more, but Old Cranky’s snake stories fascinated them as the snakes fascinate the little birds. He told them about the death-adder, with its feet like a lizard’s, and its sting like a wasp’s, besides the venomous fangs in its thick head; and of the huge boas that he had seen “ever so far up country,” joining the trees together with great cat’s cradles. There is a stumpy snake in Australia that is, perhaps, particularly dangerous, because it lies still to be trodden on; and there is, also, a small python; and out of these men like Old Cranky have made up their death-adders and their big boas. When the boys asked him to let them get a peep at these hideous creatures, he always put them off with the excuse that there were none for miles thereabouts; but he did show them something in the snake line that they did not forget in a hurry.
From wandering about the country so much alone, and not being afraid of snakes, Old Cranky knew of places that even the blacks did not know of. It was for one of these that he, and the boys, and his gingerbread kangaroo-bitch, and a shaggy old mongrel, with an ear and a half and a quarter of a tail, that could find game like a pointer and bring it in like a retriever, started one summer’s day. The old man made a great mystery of what he was going to show the boys. Except that he took them by short cuts that they were not familiar with, they saw nothing remarkable until they came to the brim of a deep little basin, with a big water-hole fringed with thick scrub at the bottom. They had not gone many steps down the side before Lag—that was the mongrel’s name—lifted up his fore-foot.
“What’s the dog pointing at?” asked Harry.
“Quail, I suppose?” said Donald.
“No, it ain’t quail,” Old Cranky answered with a grin. “Can’t ye smell ’em? Well, ye’ll see ’em soon. Keep close ahind me. Don’t ye tread but jest where I goes.”
They did see them soon. It was snakes the old man meant. He had brought them to what he called the Snakes’ Corrobboree. There they were in scores: snakes with backs like Spanish leather, and snakes with backs like a gaudy-patterned carpet; snakes with white china bellies and with striped china bellies; snakes with verdigrised-copper bellies, and with scoured-copper bellies; snakes of all colours and all sizes, up to seven feet or so; snakes wriggling like eels through the water, and floating on it like straight sticks; snakes undulating through the scrub; snakes basking on dry ground, curled up like coils of rope, or littered about like black cravats untidily thrown down upon the floor; snakes twined round tree-poles like variegated creepers, and snakes dangling their heads from grey branches like waving clusters of poisonous fruit.
