The Spider

The Adventures of Will Jones by Greg Barron

One morning, after cramming another lump of damper, spread with butter and treacle into his mouth, and chasing it down with his final swallow of tea, Will hoisted his school satchel onto his back and called for Lainey.

‘Out here,’ she called, and Will padded out the kitchen door, following her voice. She was kneeling beside their mother’s herb garden, poking at something with a twig.

‘You comin’ to school or not?’ Will asked.

Lainey ignored him. ‘It’s a funnel web spider hole,’ she said. ‘I’m gonna get the blighter out.’

Interested now, Will squatted beside her, watching as Lainey teased the spider out of its webbed hole. It was glossy black, with hairy limbs, a huge, rounded abdomen, and two talon-like fangs held high, ready to strike.

‘I reckon it’s a male,’ Will said.

‘How can you tell?’

‘I just can.’

‘Go get a jar,’ she told him.

‘Why?’

‘I’ve an idea. That’s why.’

Will hurried back into the kitchen, returning with a jar. It was light green in colour, one of many used to store tomato pickles after the last autumn pickings. The lid was made of tin, and fitted loosely, wax being needed to fix it in place. He’d caught plenty of spiders before, so he knew the technique. He placed the mouth of the jar on the ground while Lainey encouraged the deadly creature to enter with her twig.

‘Watch out,’ said Will. ‘The barsteds can jump.’ After saying this he had a quick look around to make sure his mother was not nearby and had not heard him say that banned word. He was not fond of the taste of soap.

Finally, with the spider crouching defensively inside the jar, Will held it close to his right eye to study it. ‘Well, we’ve got him. What’s the plan?’

Lainey grinned impishly. ‘How about we interduce him to ol’ Humpty Dumpty?’

Will took a few moments for this to sink in. That was their nickname for Mr Humber, the teacher. He was horrified and excited by the idea. ‘Cripes, we might kill the poor cow.’

‘So what?’ Lainey grinned widely. ‘He deserves it.’

‘Maybe,’ muttered Will, ‘anyhow, we’ll be late if all we do all day is sit around here natterin’ about it.’

Still keeping hold of the jar, and with their satchels on, they set off walking, down the rutted track that led to the Jones family’s front gate. Sheep bleated as they passed – the flock was small but valued and Will kept an eye on them. He knew the rams and breeding ewes by name, and noted when old Sal was limping a little, or Blacky was laying down in the shade, off his tucker again.

As they walked, Will holding the jar carefully so that the lid was secure, Lainey seemed to be wrestling with her conscience. ‘We could pull the barsted’s fangs off,’ she said.

Will skipped ahead sideways. ‘You can’t, it kills ’em. Eddie Wright tried it one time, and he nearly got bit while he was doin’ it. Then the blarsted thing croaked anyhow.’ He paused to put down his satchel, pick up a stone and peg it at a raven on a branch, missing by only a few inches.

The walk to school was about a mile but it passed quickly. When other kids joined them Will hid the jar in his satchel, and joined in the banter about the weather, the upcoming rodeo on Johnny Lyttle’s place, and news of Ben Hall’s gang holding up another coach near Eugowra.

The schoolhouse, when they reached it, sat back from the rest of the village, surrounded by a white picket fence. Various schoolmasters had planted trees, but they were still saplings. The only real shade was provided by two big old gums and some wattles.

As they walked through the gate, Will slunk off and hid the jar behind the privies, with a small twig keeping the lid open a crack so the creature could breathe, and a heavy rock on top so it could not escape.

On that half-acre yard of scythed grass and bare dirt, Lainey and Will played outside with the others. More kids arrived, some on horseback – sometimes two on the same mount – but mostly on foot. They chucked footballs, skipped ropes and chanted ‘oranges and lemons,’ in small groups and gangs.

 The bell tolled and they lined up in two rows. Mr Humber, dressed in dark grey trousers, breast coat and formal jacket, as was the case no matter what the weather, played God Save the Queen on a mouth organ, while the Union Jack fluttered upwards on the pole.

The teacher, who had a strong sense of theatre, kept time with harsh yells of ‘left, right, left right left,’ while the children marched around the flag, saluting when he ordered them to do so.

Once inside the schoolhouse, Mr Humber removed his jacket and draped it on his chair, then rolled up his sleeves as if he were about to chop firewood. He made a show out of selecting a stick of chalk from a box and started writing activities for each grade on the board. The children set about their tasks in order: a set of arithmetic, spelling words to be copied, and sentences to compose. After an hour of this brutally silent labour, they were asked to read from their copies of that thick and very uninteresting volume: the Fourth Reading Book for Use in Schools.

While he waited for his turn, Will felt a familiar sense of dread. He sweated and looked around. When his name was called, he stuck one dirty forefinger under the first word and tried to stammer it out. He could read, a little, if he were left alone, but right then he felt like he was standing on a podium with all the people and animals of God’s creation surrounding him, watching and laughing.  

‘Well, come on now Jones,’ cried Mr Humber. ‘We don’t have all day.’ He left his desk, marched down the row and stood over Will. At this point he removed his handkerchief and pretended to pat the sweat from his brow, rolling his eyes all the while, the picture of mock despair.

After he’d extracted a laugh from the other students Mr Humber quit the act. ‘Are you lazy, boy? Or just stupid?’ He jabbed his finger at the book. ‘The word is “avenue” boy.’

‘Avenue,’ Will repeated, but the ordeal was only just beginning. He stumbled from word to word, red-faced and voice cracking, while Humber haunted the desk, belittling and haranguing him, at intervals pretending to pass out from the pain of listening to Will read.

Somehow Will stumbled to the end of the passage, his ears burning like they were on fire. At that point Humber looked almost disappointed as the next student in line looked up, ready to start reading.

‘My thanks, Will Jones,’ said the teacher, ‘for attempting to demonstrate to the class the difference between the words imbecilic, and moronic. Not an easy task, since you display the qualities of both.’

When the recess bell tolled, the siblings met outside. Will was red-faced and trembling from the ordeal.

‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘I’m gettin’ the spider. I don’t care if the barsted does get bit.’

‘He deserves it, the bugger,’ agreed Lainey.

They waited until Mr Humber had walked, as was his habit at recess, to the outside privy that was reserved for his personal use in the rear of the school grounds. Will fetched the spider in its jar, and with Lainey as assistant, snuck into the school room. With great care, they emptied the creature into Mr Humber’s jacket pocket.

They had barely removed themselves from the room again, before the long thin figure of their teacher appeared, and the bell ringer tolled the end of recess. ‘Come along children,’ Humber called, singling out a few by name when they tarried.  

 Back at their desks, both Will and Lainey were nervous, and this made them unusually diligent. Lainey did not poke Toby Moran in the back with her pencil, or giggle with her best friend Janie. Even Mr Humber seemed to notice the change, for every now and then, at the end of a sentence, he would pause with a stick of chalk in his hand and glance at her, as a bullfighter might glance at a bull that had not yet charged.

Over the next thirty minutes, Will’s eyes were torn between his geography workbook and his teacher, who was sitting at his desk, grading papers and drinking tea from a flask.

Finally, he saw the spider. It had left Humber’s pocket, climbed over the back of his jacket and reached his shoulder. Will hissed Lainey’s name and pointed.

The spider crawled down Humber’s upper left arm. Lainey couldn’t help herself. She let out a giggle, then a loud guffaw. At that moment, Humber looked down and saw the spider, now resting on the folds of his shirt sleeves. His eyes turned white, growing bigger than soup plates. 

The children roared with laughter as the schoolteacher came to his feet, and began to hop, brushing desperately at himself all the while. Humber gripped his own forearm and let out a squeal that might have been heard ten miles away. He keeled over, in front of them all, hitting the floorboards with a thump that Will felt in his gut.

‘Jesus, the poor barsted’s dead,’ he blurted out. ‘We’ve kilt him.’

By then the children were no longer laughing. They left their seats and crept forward, until they formed a ring around the hapless schoolmaster. The funnel web was on the ground beside its apparent victim, fangs raised, threatening and dangerous.

‘We shouldn’t’ve done it,’ said Will. ‘It were bloody murder.’

Lainey, uncharacteristically, burst into tears. To Will’s ears it was the most terrifying thing he had ever heard. She had never been sorry for anything before.

Then, in a sudden movement, the school master sat bolt upright, and with an exaggerated leap, came to his feet. The ring of students cowered back a pace or two, and there was a long, stunned silence. It went on for an age. To Will it was a silence deeper than might be found in a cave, or at the foot of some Siberian iceberg. In that time no bird sang, no child talked, indeed none dared breathe.

Mr Humber uncoiled one long arm and pointed at Will. ‘Aha,’ he cried, ‘so it was you. With my little dramatic turn I have made you confess. Do you think I’m stupid? You think I’d let a spider bite my arm? I did not come down in the last shower of rain.’ He looked at Lainey too. ‘I’d bet a month’s wages that you were in this up to your filthy neck. Villains, both of you.’

The teacher strode to his desk, collected his own copy of the Fourth Reading Book for Use in Schools from his desk and used it to comprehensively splat the funnel web spider. Then he fired out a glare that could have broken glass. His voice however was now soft and controlled. ‘Go back to your seats, every one of you. Will and Elaine Jones, I will speak to you at lunch time.’

Will’s eyes roved to the cane that leaned up against the corner of the room, behind the teacher’s desk. He knew what happened when Mr Humber wanted to ‘speak’ to him.

When Will and his sister walked home at the end of the day, Lainey was uncharacteristically quiet. It was not the first time the siblings had felt the sting of Humber’s cane, but this time the schoolmaster had really put his back into it.

‘I s’pose it all turned out alright in a way,’ said Lainey. ‘It wouldn’t be too good if we had atcherly kilt him.’

Will, who had copped four more strokes on each hand than Lainey, said nothing. He was busy wondering how soon he could convince his parents, without admitting to wrong-doing, that his schooling days were done.

© 2026 Greg Barron
New chapter soon