Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

“Do you live here always?” asked Susan.

“While we’re burning,” replied the old man.

“While you’re burning the charcoal,” said Susan.

“Aye,” said the old man. “Someone has to be with the fire night and day, to keep him down like.”

“Have you really got a serpent?” asked Titty.

“An adder? Aye,” said the old man. “Like to see him?”

“Oh yes, please,” said all the Swallows.

“Well, you’re sitting on him,” said the old man.

All the Swallows, even Captain John, jumped up as if they had sat on a pin. The old man laughed. He came across the hut and rummaged under the blankets and pulled out an old cigar-box.

“It’s young Billy’s adder,” he said; “we’ll take it out to him. Hi, Billy,” he shouted from the doorhole, “let them have a look at your adder.”

He carried the little box out of the hut and the Swallows followed. Young Billy gave a last pat or two to the smoking mound, and came to them. He was another old man, but not quite so old as the first.

“Dad been showing you round?” he said to the Swallows.

“Is he your son?” Roger asked the first old man.

“He is that, and got sons and grandsons of his own, too. You wouldn’t think I was as old as all that. But I’m Old Billy and he’s Young Billy.”

THE SERPENT

“He doesn’t look like a son,” said Roger.

Young Billy laughed. “Let’s have the box, dad,” he said, and Old Billy gave him the cigar-box. He put the box on the ground and knelt beside it. He undid the catch and lifted the lid. There was nothing to be seen but a lump of greenish moss. He took a twig and gently stirred the lump. There was a loud hiss, and the brown head of a snake shot out of the moss and over the side of the box. Its forked tongue darted in and out. Young Billy touched it gently with his twig. It hissed again and suddenly seemed to pour itself in a long, brown stream over the edge of the box. Young Billy dropped his twig and took a stick and picked the snake up on the stick and lifted it off the ground. Its tail hung down on one side of the stick and its head on the other. Its head swayed from side to side as it swung there, hissing and darting out its tongue. The Swallows shrank back from it but could not look away. Suddenly it began sliding over the stick. Young Billy was ready for it, and before it dropped on the ground he caught it on another stick.

“Is it safe to touch it?” asked Susan.

“Look,” said Young Billy. He lowered the snake to the ground and put the stick in front of it. Instantly the snake struck at it open-mouthed.

“Never you go near an adder,” said Young Billy. “There’s plenty of them about. And you mind where you’re stepping in the woods or up on the fell. They’ll get out of your way if they see you, but if you happen to step on one, he’ll bite, just as he did that stick. A bad bite it is too. There’s many a one has died of it.”

“What do you keep him for?” asked John.

“Luck,” said Young Billy. “Always had one in the hut, ever since I can remember, and dad, that’s Old Billy here, can remember longer than me.”

“Aye, we’ve always had an adder,” said Old Billy, “and so had my dad, when he was at the burning, and he was burning on these fells a hundred years ago.”

Young Billy neatly dropped the snake in its box and shut the lid on it. He held the box for the children to listen. They could hear the snake hissing inside. Then he gave the box back to Old Billy, who went off with it back into the hut.

A big puff of smoke rolled from the burning mound.

“Look there,” said Young Billy. “Can’t leave him a minute but he’s out. Like the adder is fire. Just a bit of a hole and out he comes.” He picked up his spade and went to the mound, where a small tongue of flame was licking a hole from inside. He put a spadeful of earth on the hole and patted it down.

“Why don’t you let it burn, if you’re burning?” said Titty. “We always want our fires to burn and sometimes they won’t.”

“We want ours to burn good and slow,” said Young Billy. “If he burns fast he leaves nowt but ash. The slower the fire the better the charcoal.”

Susan was watching carefully.

“Why doesn’t it go out?” she asked.

“Got too good a hold,” said Young Billy. “Once he’s got a good hold you can cover a fire up and the better you cover him the hotter he is and the slower he burns. But if you let him have plenty of air there’s no holding him.”

“Could we do it with a little fire?” asked Susan. “If I cover it with earth will my camp fire burn all night?”

“Aye,” said Young Billy, “if you want a fire to last, cover him with clods of earth and pour some water on them to damp them. He’ll be alight in the morning, and he’ll boil your kettle for you when you take the clods off him.”

“I’ll try it to-night,” said Susan.

“Let me have the telescope,” said Roger.

Captain John was looking through the telescope at the lake which lay far below them. From those high woods where the charcoal-burners had their fire and their wigwam of larch poles, the whole length of the lake could be seen. Far beyond Rio and its islands, the blue lake under the clear summer sky stretched away into the big hills. Away to the south the lake narrowed and narrowed until it became a winding river through green lowlands. A little cloud of white steam where the lake ended and river began showed where one of the lake steamers was resting by the pier there. Another steamer was moving down the lake by Darien. On this windless day the water was smooth and blue but astern of the steamer were two long, spreading waves, like a huge V moving down the lake and stretching from one shore to the other.

“Let me have the telescope,” said Roger again, “I want to see our island.”

“Wait a minute,” said Captain John, “there’s a boat close to it.”

“It’s not the Amazons, is it,” said Titty, “coming to make a surprise attack?”

“No,” said Captain John, “there’s only a man in it. One of the natives probably, fishing. But we ought to be going down all the same. We’ve left Swallow all alone.”

He gave Roger the telescope.

“You can’t see the whole of our island,” he said. “Part of it is hidden by the trees down there. But watch where that man goes to.”

“Are you the children camping on the island below?” asked Young Billy. “I thought you were. You had those Blackett lasses with you yesterday, hadn’t you. We saw their little boat. Hi! Dad!”

Old Billy came back from the wigwam.

“Dad,” said Young Billy, “they’re the young ones that have been camping on the island. Blackett’s lasses were with them yesterday.”

“Aye,” said Old Billy, “I mind well when Mrs. Blackett, little Miss Turner she was then, came to see my fire and my hut when she was no bigger than what you are now, miss.” He looked at Susan measuringly. “She and Master Jim. Eh! Eh! And now she’s a grown woman with two lasses of her own.”

“It’s Master Jim I’m thinking of,” said Young Billy. “It ’ud be a good thing to let him know what folk are saying.”

“It would that,” said Old Billy.

Young Billy turned again to John and Susan.

“Shall you be seeing those lasses again?” he asked.

“Yes,” said John, “as soon as ever there’s a wind for sailing. But we can’t do anything in a calm like this.”

“Well, you tell them to tell their Uncle Jim . . .”

“They can’t,” Titty broke in, “they’re at war with him.”