The sword in the stone (23 page)

It was in such a flutter that it did not wait for its question to be answered, but went on excitedly, "Oh, the horrid creature. Did you notice how it smelt? Well, I shan't go out again in a hurry, that I will say. Look what a mess I have got myself in. It was an H. sapiens barbatus, as far as I could see. They are quite common round here. You take my advice and lie close for a day or two. I just went out for a moment with the idea of getting a frog or two before hibernating, and it pounced upon me like a hedgehog. I don't believe I was ever so frightened in my life. Do you think it would be best to hibernate at once?"

"I shouldn't worry," said the Wart. "That particular human is fond of snakes, as I happen to know."

"To eat?" stammered the serpent.

"No, no. He is friendly with them, and has some as pets. We — he, I mean — that is, he spends most of the botany hours looking for frogs to feed them on. It's wonderful how few frogs there are, once you begin looking for them — only toads. And of course snakes don't eat toads."

"I ate a toad once," said the other, who was beginning to calm down. "It was a small one, you know, but it wasn't very nice. Still, I don't think I should like to be a pet of that creature's, however many frogs it caught. Do you happen to know its sex?"

"It was a male," said the Wart.

"H. sapiens barbatus ," repeated the snake, feeling safer now that he had got the subject classified. "And what is your name, my child?" The Wart did not know what to answer, so he simply told the truth.

"It's a funny sort of name," said the snake doubtfully.

"What is yours?" asked the Wart.

"T. natrix."

"Does the T stand for anything?"

"Well, not Tommy," said the snake rather coolly, "if that's what you mean. It's Tropidonotus: in my family always."

"I'm sorry."

"If you don't mind my saying so," remarked the snake, "it seems to me that your education has been neglected. First you have a mother who calls you Wart, just as if you were one of those vulgar Bufonidæ, and then you can't distinguish a T. natrix when you see him. Did you never have a mother?"

"As a matter of fact, I didn't."

"Oh, I am sorry," exclaimed the snake. "I hope I haven't hurt your feelings. Do you mean to say you never had anybody to teach you the Legends and Dreams and that?"

"Never."

"You poor newt. What do you do then when you hibernate?"

"I suppose I just go to sleep."

"And not dream?"

"No," said the Wart. "I don't think so. Not much." It turned out that T. natrix was an affectionate and tender-hearted creature, for it now shed a small, clear tear through its nose — and exclaimed indignantly, "What a shame! Fancy the poor little reptile crawling into its lonely hole for all those months with not a mother to remember, and not a single Dream to keep it company. I suppose they haven't even taught you History?"

"I know some history," said the Wart doubtfully. "About Alexander the Great, and that."

"Some trashy modern stuff, no doubt," said the snake. "How in earth you get through the winter I don't know. Did anybody tell you about Adantosaurus immanis and Ceratosaurus nasicornis?"

"I don't think so."

"Well, I don't know what to say."

"Couldn't you tell me about them yourself?"

"It certainly seems the kindest thing to do," replied the snake, "and, by Aesculapius, I will do it, too, if it takes me all the afternoon. Why, I should hardly be able to sleep the whole winter, thinking of you shivering in that hole with nothing to muse about."

"It would be very kind of you if you would."

"And I will," said the gentle reptile. "I will teach you the sort of thing that all snakes revolve in their small, slow, winter brains, what time the snow shuffles down outside, or for that matter in the summer too, as they snooze beside warm stones. Would you rather have History or Legends?"

"I think History," said the Wart.

"History," murmured the snake, drawing a film over its eyes because it could not close them. "History," it repeated softly. "Ah."

"I wonder," said the snake after a minute. Then it gave a gentle sigh and gave it up.

"You must forget about us," it said absently. "There is no History in me or you. We are individuals too small for our great sea to care for. That is why I don't have any special name, but only T. natrix like all my forefathers before me. There is a little History in T. natrix, but none in me."

It stopped, baffled by its own feelings, and then began again in its slow voice.

"There is one thing which all we snakes remember, child. Except for two people, we are the oldest in the world. Look at that ridiculous H. sapiens barbatus which gave me such a fright just now. It was born when? Ten or twenty thousand years ago. What do the tens and twenties matter? The earth cooled. The sea covered it. It was a hundred million years ago that Life came to the Great Sea, and the fishes bred within it. They were the oldest people, the Fish. Their children climbed out of it and stood upon the bosky shores, and they were the Amphibia like our friends the newts. The third people, who sprang from them, were the Reptiles, of which we are one. Think of those old faces of the world upon which T. natrix moved in the slime, and of the millions of years. Why, the birds which you see every day are our descendants: we are their parents, but can persist to live along with them."

"Do you mean that when you were born there were no birds or men?"

"No birds or men: no monkeys or reindeer or elephants or any such animals: only the amphibia and the reptiles and the fishes and the mesozoic world."

"That's History," added the snake thoughtfully. "One of those H. sapiens barbatus ; might think of that next time he murders T. natrix for being a viper."

"There is something strange about the Will of the Sea. It is bound up with the history of my family. Did you ever hear the story of H. sapiens armatus georgius sanctus?"

"I don't think I did," said the Wart.

"Once, very long ago, when even T. natrix was young and hopeful, there were two families called Atlantosaurus immanis and Ceratosaurus nasicornis. Atlantosaurus was a hundred and fifteen feet long. He had not many brains, although I did hear once that he had something like an extra brain at the other end of him, to take care of his tail, and he lived by browsing on the trees. He was timid, ruminant and harmless, except to the tree-frogs which he munched by mistake among the boughs. He lived very long and thought all the time, so that, although he did not think very well, he had generally thought a good deal by the end of it. So far as I can remember, he had solved the problem of being a giant, without breaking on account of his own weighty height of twenty feet, by having his bones hollow. The birds do that too, you know, for other reasons. However, perhaps I am muddling him up with another of the Dinosauria.

"Ceratosaurus nasicornis was quite small. He was only seventeen feet long. But he had teeth, great, crushing and tearing teeth, which fitted into each other so badly that he leaped always with his slaughterous mouth half open, in a grin of terror. He leaped like a kangaroo, a death-dealing kangaroo, and he generally leaped upon poor Atlantosaurus immanis. He had a horn upon his nose, like a rhinoceros, with which he could rip an opening in that big and trundling old body, and his clashing teeth could meet in the flesh as in ripe fruit and tear it out in mouthfuls by the action of his muscular neck. What is more terrible, he leaped in packs.

"Ceratosaurus nasicornis was at war with Atlantosaurus immanis, in that strange war which the Spirit of the Waters wills, the war of competition and evolution which makes the trees fight upwards for the sun on the Amazon, and in the course of which, for the boon of life, many of my cousins have been content to sacrifice the benefits of limbs and teeth and eyesight.

"Ceratosaurus was savage and aggressive, Atlantosaurus timid and old. Their combat lasted for as many centuries as will be needed by H. sapiens also, in which to destroy himself. At the end of that time it was the defender who triumphed. The ferocious Kangaroo had dealt death on every side, had decimated his adversaries and fed upon their carcasses, but carcasses cannot continue their species, and in the end the Kangaroos had consumed the very flesh on which they lived. Too remorseless for the Spirit of the Waters, too bloodthirsty for the hierarchy of progressive victims, the last Ceratosaurus roamed the thick-leaved jungles in a vain search for the food which could satisfy his gnashing jaws: then died and slept with his fathers.

"The last Atlantosaurus thrust her forty-foot neck out of the jungle in which she had been hiding, and surveyed the emaciated corpse of her starved persecutor. She had preserved her life, as the sensible wood pigeon does, by specializing in escape. She had learned to flee, to hide, to stand still, to control her scent, to conceal herself in waters. By humility she had survived her enemy, who had slain her own husband; and now she carried the children of the latter inside her, the last of the victorious race. They would be born in a few years.

"H. sapiens had come meanwhile. He also had suffered from the terror of the Kangaroo. In order to protect himself from its rapine, he had developed a sub-class called H. sapiens armatus, a class which was concealed in metal scales and carried a lance by means of which it defended itself against the Dinosauria. This sub-class had perfected an order called H. sapiens armatus georgius sanctus, which was sufficiently unobservant to classify all the Dinosaurs together as its enemies.

"Atlantosaurus thrust out her neck, and thought with triumph of her unborn children. She had never killed in her life, and these, the future, would perpetuate a vegetarian race. She heard the clank of H. sapiens armatus georgius sanctus, and turned the comely reptile head towards him in her kindly curiosity."

"Go on," said the Wart.

"He killed her, of course," concluded the serpent with sudden brevity, turning its own head away. "She was a reptile of my race."

"I am sorry," said the Wart. "I don't know what to say."

"There is nothing, dear," said the patient serpent, "that you can say. Perhaps I had better tell you a Legend or Dream, to change the subject." The Wart said, "I don't think I want to hear it, if it is sad."

"There is nothing sad," said the other, "except History. All these things are only something to muse upon while you are hibernating."

"Is it a good thing to muse.

"Well, it passes the time. Even H. sapiens has museums, you know: and as far as that goes, he has put the chalky bones of Atlantosaurus in many of them, along with the scales of georgius sanctus."

"If you knew a fairly cheerful Legend," said the Wart, "I think I could bear to hear that."

"Ridiculous newt," said T. natrix affectionately — for Newt seemed to be one of his pet words. "I suppose I shall have to tell you a Legend of my dangerous cousins, for whom I suffer."

"It is cheerful?"

"Well, it just goes on to the end, you know, and then stops — as Legends do."

"Tell it," said the Wart.

"This Legend," said the snake in its sing-song voice, after a preparatory cough,"comes from Burma, a place of which you have probably never heard.

"Once upon a time there was only one poisonous serpent in the world, and this was the python. As you know, he is no longer venomous, and the story of how he lost his venom is an interesting one. In those days he was perfectly white. He happened to make the acquaintance of the wife of a human being, whose name was Aunt Eu, and in course of time they fell in love with each other. Aunt Eu left her husband and went off to live with the python, whose name was P. reticulatus. She was in some ways an old-fashioned kind of person, the kind which delights in making carpet-slippers for curates among the humans, and she soon set about weaving a most handsome and closely woven skin for her python. It was an ornamental affair, what with black lozenges and yellow dots, and here and there at regular intervals cubes and cross-stitches of amber, such as the humans use in rug-making or working samplers. P. reticulatus was pleased with it, and wears it always, so that now he is not white any more.

"At this time the python was interested in making experiments with his unique venom. Since he was the only poisonous snake, he naturally contained within himself all the poison which is nowadays spread out among the snakes. So concentrated was this terrible poison, therefore, that he could kill a man, however far away he was, simply by biting any footprint which the man had happened to leave on the ground. P. reticulatus was naturally proud of this accomplishment, but he could never get ocular proof of it. He could not be there to see the man die, and at the same time three or four miles away to bite his footprint. Yet he wanted very much to establish the truth of the experiment.