"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?"