Tales from the Veld

Chapter Ten

The Black Mamba

We were talking about snakes at the little roadside winkle– a composite shop, where you could buy moist black sugar, tinned butter, imported; tinned milk, also imported; cotton, prints, boots, “square face,” tobacco, dates, nails, gunpowder, cans, ribbons, tallow candles, and the “Family Herald.” We always did talk about snakes when other topics failed, and no one had been fishing for some time, and the big pumpkin season had passed.

“Man,” said Lanky John, the ostrich farmer, “I killed a snake, a ringhals, yesterday morning back of the kraal, and in the evening when I went by there was a live ringhals coiled round the dead one.”

“There’s a lot of love among snakes,” said Abe Pike, who had swapped a bush-buck hide for a pound of coffee and a roll of tobacco. “They don’t talk much, but they think a lot, and you can’t plumb the feelings of silent folk; they’re that deep.”

“Ever been in love, Uncle?” asked Lanky John, popping a big lump of black sugar into his mouth.

“I guess it won’t take more’n a foot measure to get to the bottom of your feelings, tho’ you are long enough to be a telegraft pole,” snorted Uncle Abe.

“Snakes haven’t got any brain,” said Lanky John, after an awkward pause.

“No more has a whip-stick,” said the old man, with a contemptuous glance at Lanky’s long, thin limbs.

“That’s true,” replied John, with a wink at us; “though I’ve heard of a snake that glued on to a whip-stick all for love of you, Uncle.”

“Snakes,” said Abe, “knows when to speak and when to keep shut, which is more than some folk can do. If you come unexpected on a snake in a path, and he sees your foot coming down on him, he lets you know he’s about, and that foot of yours is jest fixed in the air. Well, suppose that snake is not in the path, but jest stretched out ’longside, he don’t call out. For why? ’Cos he knows it’s safer for him and for you that he should keep quiet. I tell you there’s not a man here who hasn’t time and again passed in the dark within a few inches of a snake.”

A listener, who was seated in a dark corner, moved out into the sunshine.

“Did I ever tell you that yarn about the black mamba?”

“You never did, old man, so shove along.”

“You may thank your stars there’s no mambas down in this country, for of all critturs that crawl, or fly, or walk, there’s not one for nateral cussedness and steady hate to come up to a black mamba. Why! thunder! if there was a mamba in these parts, and he’d a grudge against me, I’d move off a hundred miles to where my sister ’Liza lives.”

“A hundred miles! That’s a good step.”

“Maybe it wouldn’t be fur enough neither. You wait! Ten years ago I was riding goods to the Diamond Fields, and after one trip I was starting back with the empty wagon, there being no produce to load up with, when a chap came up and offered three guineas for his passage. Well, a man’s wagon is his home, and you don’t want to give a fellow the run of your tent for a month without knowing something about him. So I jes’ looked him all over – saw that his boots were worn out, and that he kep’ looking over his shoulder, when he climbed into the wagon and drew the blanket over him – though the sun was fierce enough to light your pipe. He gave me sich a look when he went in that I had not the heart to drag him out, and off I trekked. He didn’t join me at the fire that night, and when I climbed in, thinking he was asleep, he was shiverin’ as though he had the ague. Well, I gave him a glass of Cango and went to sleep. At sunrise I trekked again, and bymby I see him draw the canvas aside and look back over the veld, which was as flat as the palm of my hand. Thinks I, he’s expecting the police, but I let him be, and at dinner he came out, looking as skeered as a monkey with a candle. First he took a walk round the wagon, then he shaded his eyes as he glanced over the veld, then he took a bite and a look, then a sip and a look.

“‘What are you looking for?’ says I.

“He let the beaker fall out of his hands and turned white.

“‘Have you seen it?’ he whispered, with a sort of choke.

“‘Seen what?’ I said.

“‘I don’t feel well,’ he answered, with a twitch for a smile, and climbed back into the wagon.

“I tell you his looks made me feel queer, and I slept that night under the wagon. Well, I made a long skoff the next day, crossed the Modder River, and no sooner’d we get across than the river came down with a rush, brimming full with a boiling yeller flood right up to the lip of the steep banks. That coon spent the whole day on the bank watching the other side, and fixing his eyes on every tree and branch that went sailing down.

“‘It’s a grand flood,’ he said, rubbing his hands together; ‘’twould sweep a whale away like a piece of straw.’

“‘Yes, and a policeman too, eh?’ said I, looking at him hard.

“He noticed the meaning in my words, and a human smile broke over his face, chasing away the worried look that seemed carved into it. ‘Policeman,’ he said. ‘I’ve no cause to fear a policeman, or any man. Good God!’ he cried, catching me by the arm, ‘what’s that?’

“‘Where?’ said I, fit to jump out of my skin for the terror in his face.

“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 snatched 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 butt 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 passengers, 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 grass, and I thought of nothing then but escape. After a time I met a party of Zulus, but when I asked for their assistance, 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 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.”

Chapter Twelve

Abe Pike and the Big Fish

The Fish River was “down.” It generally was down, in the sense of being low, but colonial rivers run by contraries – when they are down they are up. There had been a heavy fall of rain “up country,” and the water rushing off the sun-baked surface poured like a flood between the high banks, sweeping, as we afterwards heard, a stone bridge away, and catching in its career a wagon and span of eighteen oxen at a drift which, at the time of crossing, had scarcely water enough to wet the feet. For many a mile the banks of the river are of red soil, and as the flood eats into the banks its waters are stained a dull brick colour, which hue is imparted to the Atlantic itself for miles along the coast as the red waters pour out into the sea, bearing with them a wonderful collection of flotsam in the shape of timber, dead stock, and live reptiles. Of late, railway sleepers formed no small part of the flotsam, and if work was slack we sometimes, when the river was down, spent a sloppy day on the banks fishing for these floating items. On hearing the news I rode off to pick up Uncle Abe, but finding him out, went to a spot on the bank which he particularly favoured, where a wide flat rock stood at the base of a krantz. He was not there, however, and the rock itself was covered by the flood, which reached half-way up the krantz, but it was evident he had been there, for from a cave in the rock, just above the lap of the waters, there issued a thin line of smoke, and on climbing along a ledge I saw signs of his occupation in a skin kaross, a dark lantern, a gun, and a few well-known traps which he always carried with him when after kablejauw, the great hundred pounders which come up as far as this point in the spring tides. Now thoroughly alarmed for his safety, I rode down towards the sea, from which, six miles away, there came the continuous roar and thunder of the surf, and, to my great relief, met him in a bush path, with a full-grown otter on his back, and the water oozing from his top boots and from his clothes, which clung to his lank body.