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.