But alas for human certainty! Even then swarms of grasshoppers were speeding towards us, and by sundown were with us.
In vain Cheon and the staff, the rejected, Bett-Bett, every shadow and the missus, danced war-dances in the vegetable patch, and chivied and chased, and flew all ways at once; the grasshoppers had found green stuff exactly to their liking, and coming in clouds, settled, and feasted, and flew upwards, and settled back, and feasted, and swept on, leaving poor Cheon’s heart as barren of hope as the garden was of vegetables. Nothing remained but pumpkins, sweet potatoes, and Cheon’s tardy watermelons, and the sight of the glaring blotches of pumpkins filled Cheon with fury.
“Pumpee-kin for Clisymus!” he raved, kicking furiously at the hideous wens. Not if he knew it! and going to some stores left in our care by the Line Party, he openly stole several tins of preserved vegetables. “Must have vegetable longa Clisymus,” he said, feeling his theft amply justified by circumstances, but salved his conscience by sending a gift of eggs to the Line Party as a donation towards its “Clisymus.”
Then finding every one sympathetic, he broached a delicate subject. By some freak of chance, he said, the missus was the only person who had succeeded in growing good melons this year, and taking her to the melon beds, which the grasshoppers had also passed by, he looked longingly at three great fruits that lay like mossy green boulders among the rich foliage. “Just chance,” he reiterated, and surely the missus would see that chance also favoured our “Clisymus.” “A Clisymus without dessert would be no Clisymus at all,” he continued, pressing each fruit in turn between loving hands until it squeaked in response. “Him close up ripe, missus. Him sing out!” he said, translating the squeak.
But the missus appeared strangely inattentive, and in desperation Cheon humbled himself and apologised handsomely for former scoffings. Not chance, he said, but genius! Never was there white woman like the missus! “Him savey all about,” he assured the Măluka. “Him plenty savey gardin.” Further, she was a woman in a thousand! A woman all China would bow down to! Worth ninety-one-hundred pounds in any Chinese matrimonial market. “A valuable asset,” the Măluka murmured.
It was impossible to stand against such flattery. Billy Muck was hastily consulted, and out of his generous heart voted two of the mossy boulders to the white folk, keeping only one for “black fellow all about.” Poor old Billy! He was to pay dearly for his leaning to the white folk.
Nothing was amiss now but Dan’s non-appearance; and the egg-beater whirring merrily on, by Christmas Eve, the Dandy and Jack, coming in with wild duck for breakfast and the Vealer, found the kitchen full of triumphs and Cheon wrestling with an immense pudding. “Four dozen egg sit down,” he chuckled, beating at the mixture. “One bottle port wine, almond, raisin, all about, more better’n Pine Creek all right”; and the homestead taking a turn at the beating “for luck,” assured him that it “knocked spots off Pine Creek.”
“Must have money longa poodin’!” Cheon added, and our wealth lying also in a cheque book, it was not until after a careful hunt that two threepenny bits were produced, when one, with a hole in it, went in “for luck,” and the other followed as an omen for wealth.
The threepenny bits safely in, it took the united efforts of the homestead to get the pudding into a cloth and thence into a boiler, while Cheon explained that it would have been larger if only we had had a larger boiler to hold it. As it was, it had to be boiled out in the open, away from the buildings, where Cheon had constructed an ingenious trench to protect the fire from rain and wind.
Four dozen eggs in a pudding necessitates an all-night boiling, and because of this we offered to share “watches” with Cheon, but were routed in a body. “We were better in bed,” he said. What would happen to his dinner if any one’s appetite failed for want of rest? There were too few of us as it was, and, besides, he would have to stay up all night in any case, for the mince pies were yet to be made, in addition to brownie and another plum-pudding for the “boys,” to say nothing of the hop-beer, which if made too soon would turn with the thunder and if made too late would not “jump up” in time. He did not add that he would have trusted no mortal with the care of the fires that night.