“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.”