Tales from the Veld Part 9

"He stood there with his eyes glaring at the water, and a shaking finger pointing into the very heart of the yeller flood. There stood out the root of a tree, and clinging to the root the coils of a snake, with his gleaming head moving like a branch. Jest a moment it showed, then the water swirled over it again.

"'Let go of my arm,' I said, for his fingers were biting into me, and the look of him made me afeard, so that I talked gruffly.

"'Did you see it?' he said, and then he jest collapsed like a bundle of clothes. I had a good mind to leave him there, but, instead, I histed him on to my shoulders, and poured enough Cango into him to make him forget his name. He wasn't fit to stand until a couple of days after, and then wha' jer think he did? Cut up his clothes into shreds and laughed fit to kill himself when I found him at it. Of course, I thought he was clean daft, but he weren't, and for the first time, with my old corduroys on him, he sat by the camp fire, sipping his coffee, and talking--talking mainly about snakes and bloodhounds, and things that made my backbone whang like a broken fiddle-string. He frightened himself, too, so that when he saw the long _achter-oss_ sjambok quivering on the ground where the driver had thrown it, his jaw got rigid, and moved up and down without any words coming from his mouth.

Then, with a sort of sob, he s.n.a.t.c.hed up the axe, and I'm blowed if he didn't cut that sjambok into a thousand bits. It was a good sjambok, too, made of rhinoceros hide, as thick as your wrist at the b.u.t.t and going off to a point, and when I told the idiot what he'd done, he jes'

went off into another unnateral fit of wild laughter, after which he paid me a guinea and went to bed. Putting this, that, and the other together, with the Cango brandy, I guessed my man had got snakes in his head, and I kept the demijohn under lock. That calmed him down, and he was all right until we came to the Orange River, where we had to camp while the water went down. About fifty wagons were there waiting to cross, and there was quite a stir with all the fellows moving about visiting. When we had outspanned, I joined a group to hear about the state of the roads, the condition of the veld for grazing, and all them things that transport riders talk about, when one chap asked if I had heard the news. 'What news?' says I. 'About that snake,' says he; 'he was seen at the Riet River drift last week.' 'Yes,' says another, 'and two days before he was at Aliwal North.' 'I heard from the mail coach driver,' says a third, 'that the snake overtook his coach, stopped the horses, and took a steady look at all the pa.s.sengers, after which he went across the veld, leaving 'em all frozen with terror. It was twenty feet long, and its eyes were like black diamonds.'

"Of course, I wasn't swallering that, but when I told my traveller the sweat gathered in big drops on his forehead, and the old hunted look came into his face. 'You don't believe this silly yarn?' says I, placing my hand on his shoulder. 'Believe it, man!' he said. 'Good heavens! that snake is after me.' 'After you,' says I. 'Yes,' says he, making an effort to swallow something. 'It has chased me up and down over a thousand miles for two months.' 'Nonsense!' I said; 'you're nervous and fanciful.' 'Listen,' he said. 'Two months ago I was hunting in the Zulu country, and one day, ten miles away from my camp, I shot a mamba. I took the body back with me to skin it; but when the two blacks I had with me saw it, they cried out to me to take it away, or the mamba's mate would come in the night. I left them sleeping by the fire, and the next morning they were still sleeping--ay, they were sleeping the last sleep, for the mamba had been in the night.'

"As I looked at them, with the blood in me like water, I heard a heavy breathing, and saw my horse on the ground, his eyes glazed and his nostrils fighting for breath, while, resting on his body, was the awful head of a mamba, his eyes fixed on mine, and his forked tongue darting in and out. I fired at him with the rifle barrel, but clean missed in my flurry; then I ran until my courage came back. I found that I had left the powder behind, and slowly turned back. I had not gone a hundred paces when I met him on my track, slipping like a black streak through the gra.s.s, and I thought of nothing then but escape. After a time I met a party of Zulus, but when I asked for their a.s.sistance, they fled with loud cries of alarm, and at a Zulu kraal, where I stopped to ask for thick milk, they drove me out when they learnt why it was I fled. That night as I slept that snake coiled by my side.

"'What!'

"'Yes; he could have struck me then, but he preferred to have full vengeance. I woke at the flicker of his tongue on my cheek, thinking it was a fly--a fly! good Lord! and my hand fell upon his cold, sinewy folds, and his head was resting on my shoulder. Ever since he has been after me, with a deadly hate that is slowly driving me mad. Sometimes he disappears, but I never escape from the glint of his unwinking eyes, and one day he will strike, unless--unless--'

"'Well?' said I, looking at his drawn face.

"'Unless,' he said, 'I forestall him.'

"'No my lad,' said I, 'for that would be a sin, and when you are stronger this dream of yours will go.'

"He looked so fallen in, so weak, all of a sudden, that I took him for a walk to the river, and the rush of the waters seemed to comfort him. He sat on a big boulder looking across, and the whiteness presently went from his cheeks.

"'I've got an idea,' he said, 'if I could reach the other side I'd be all right again.'

"We sat there in a sort of a dream for an hour or two, when I happened to look round, and right there on the flat of the ground was stretched out the biggest and the ugliest snake I ever saw, black as night, with a great vicious diamond-shaped head, and a pair of eyes that glowed all colours. He looked as if he'd travelled; his scales, instead of being glossy, were dull with scratches here and there, and his skin had a sort of bagginess as if he hadn't eaten for weeks. As soon as he saw me turn he raised his head about five feet from the ground, and from his eyes there shot a look that jest kept me fixed like a stone. Then that poor young feller on the stone began to speak again, in a soft way, of the river and its journey to the sea.

"'I wish,' he said, 'I could look on the sea again.' Then I heard him move, and I knew he was looking into the eyes of his enemy, for that snake began to sway his head to and fro, to and fro, while his tail went twisting in and out, sending his body nearer and nearer. Suddenly there was a shriek, and a splash, and the snake went by me--streamed over the rock into the water, and when I leapt to my feet with a yell that startled the whole camp, I saw an arm thrust above the yeller flood, and above the arm the bend of that black snake, his head turned down looking into the water, and a coil of his body round the elbow. Ole Abe Pike has swound away once, and that was the time. Yes; there was his black body gleaming with the water on it, and his head turned towards the face of the enemy--that poor young chap he had follered over three countries for one thousand miles--one thousand English miles."

"That a true story, Uncle Abe?"

"Ain't I told it? That's why I gave up transport riding. I darsn't go near that Orange River again."

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 suns.h.i.+ne," 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 splas.h.i.+ng 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 splas.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.s 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 gra.s.s 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?"