Chapter Eleven.
How the Melons Disappeared.
I think I have said that Uncle Abe knew everything there was to be known about farming, but he was content with his knowledge and never put it to practical use, unless it was in the growing of water-melons. His melons were the biggest and the sweetest, with the reddest hearts and the smoothest rinds in the district. His patch was on the sunny side of the slope, and when the big glistening globes were coming to fruition, the old chap would sit on the worn sod bank above them and watch them “drinking in the sunshine,” as he said. I went over one morning to collect six melons, previously selected, in exchange for a sack of meal, and found him seated on a bank, the picture of misery.
“What’s the matter, Uncle?”
“A go-hoppin’ ghost’s been around here eating my melons.”
“A what?”
“A spook, and he’s walked off with the very six melons you set your mark against.”
I dismounted, and walked into the melon patch, the old man silently pointing out to me, with the stem of his pipe, the severed stems of my melons.
“They’re gone—you see.”
“Yes,” I answered dryly, “and the man who gathered them used a very clean-cutting knife.”
“What man?”
“Come, Uncle, you have parted with my melons to someone else, and I consider you have behaved shabbily.”
“That’s it—go on. It isn’t enough that my hair should turn white in the loneliness of the dark at the dog-hopping terror that came out of the deep pool down below there, ’midst a fearful groaning in the air and a splashing in the water, but you must turn on me.”
“What became of those melons, you old shuffler?”
“I ain’t had a smoke for six days, and, on top of that, each morning I woke up with an empty pipe to find a melon missing.”
I handed him my pouch, and waited for explanations.
“Yes,” he said, ramming the tobacco down with his little finger; “six days ago when I came over here to watch them melons mopping in the sunshine I saw at once one was gone—and gone, too, without so much as leaving any sign but a straight cut through the stem to show how it went, not a footprint, nor a bruised leaf, nor anything. Yes, that was the smallest of the six; and next morning another was gone, the next biggest, and there was no mark on the ground. I tell you that want of sign made me queer, and when that night I yeard a splashing down there in the pool—and there’s no sound, mind you, that comes so mysterious as the sudden splash of water out of the night—I wondered if the Kaffir’s devil was climbing out of the pool, or if the little brown man, the Tikoloshe, was up to his mischief. There was that splash, loud and sudden, as if the big tail of a monstrous snake had come down smack on the water; then there was a humming all around me in the air. Have you got a match?”
He struck the match on his corduroys, lifting his knee to stretch the breeches taut, and his hollow cheeks nearly met inside as he puffed, then he held the glow of the expiring match before me.
“There was a humming in the air all around me, and my skin tingled all over jes’sif the wind were whipping the sand against my wet body when coming from a sea bathe, and in the centre of that melon patch I seed a spark of fire like that dying match, jes’ one dull spark of fire without any ray from it. That was all. Next morning the third melon was gone—clean gone.”
“Yes; and you ate it.”
“I grow melons—I don’t eat ’em. The next day I set a spring-gun with the string from the fourth melon to the trigger, and in the middle of the night I woke up with a start to the report of the gun and to a long terrible wail, that seemed to come out of the depth of the sky and from the heart of the earth. It just went soughing and sighing and wailing through the house, and round it and over it, so that your eyes would follow it up and down and round, as though there was some living person there screeching. I tell you an ole rooster that was perched on the foot of my bedstead fell down in a dead faint, so that I had to pour a teaspoonful of brandy down his throat.”
“The melon must have given you indigestion.”
“Look here, sonny; if you play any longer on that string you’ll wear it out. In the morning there was one melon left, the spring-gun having blown the fourth one to smithereens—pieces of it being scattered all over the ground—though there was not a fragment of skin or hair or feather to show what sort of thing it was had carried off the fifth melon. There was one left. The biggest of the lot—a great dark-green ball of liquid fire and honey, that would ha’ fetched first prize at any show. I made up my mind to save that one, so I built a kraal round it with stakes driven in a foot deep, and roofed in with saplins, and over all a fence of thorns. And when the dark came on I sat out there with the gun and the bull’s-eye lantern. I tell you I’ve suffered a lot in trying to keep those six melons of yours—and that night there was a stillness in the air that brought out all my sufferings on the stretch like fiddle-strings. It was dead quiet far into the night, with the stars blinking, and the voice of the sea appearing to pass overhead, when of a sudden there came that splash from the pool, loud and startlin’. I stood up to look down into the valley, then I slipped inside.”
“What did you see?”
“See! nothing; but I felt there was something crawling up that hill—and through the air all around there came that humming. Yes, I slipped inside; but on the bank I left that lantern glaring like a great eye over the melon patch. I could not sleep for a melancholy sound in the air, half whistle, half moan; and when I went into the middle room to look out of the window, I’m gummed ef that bull’s-eye lantern wasn’t standing on the table with the slide shut. That very same lantern I’d left all ablaze on the bank—and in the room there was a smell of crabs, a damp, muddy smell, and beyond the window was a smoulderin’ fire—the same dull spark-like point I had seen on the first night.”
“Your pipe is out; do you want another match?”
“A match is not much good without baccy. Thankye, sonny. So I climbed into bed again, or rather—for I’m not ashamed of being afraid—under the bed, and there I was when I yeard the old rooster say good-morning to the sun. The first thing I did was to look at the melon patch, and—what’jer think—”
“Go on, you wretched old fabricator.”
“I seed that last water-melon sliding down the hill.”
“Sliding? Wasn’t it walking?”
“Yes, sliding—not rolling, as you’d expect a round thing to do down a steep like that, but jes’ gently sliding, as though it were resting on a coat. There was nothing by it, nothing at all, and it was the most surprisin’ sight I ever seed to watch that fine melon softly skimming over the grass and dodging all the stones. I was so lost, flabbergasted, unbalanced by this sight that I never saw what was awaiting the melon, down by the pool, until the last thing, when it slid, all of a sudden, into a dark hole. Into a dark hole—a sort of tunnel level with the take-off into the pool—and that hole, that tunnel, sonny, was the throat of the big devil-snake. All in a moment I saw that. The melon disappeared, the jaws of the snake came together, and a column of water shot into the air as he slid back into the pool.”
“So; and that’s where the six melons went?”
“Five, sonny; five—one of ’em was blown to smithereens by the gun. The five of ’em were swallowed by that devil-snake.”
“And how did he cut the stems so clean?”
“That’s where the mystery comes in, sonny. I expect you’ll have to take six of the best that are left, sonny; and I’m going into town next week to get some dynamite to blow the bottom outer that pool. That devil-snake might take it into his head to swallow me one of these fishing nights.”