9
Postie
CRUSOE SWALLOWED THE swan with ease and satisfaction. He was not fussy (as Grumble had guessed much earlier) and it made a good square meal and a welcome addition to his diet of fish and eels. He had lived in the lochan long enough now to have caused the fish supplies to shrink, and once he had realized that there was prey on top of the water as well as below it, a great many waterfowl, feeding or resting on the surface, went to satisfy his appetite.
The Water Horse took coot, moorhens, seagulls even, but especially duck. Those birds that fed by dabbling, like mallard and teal and wigeon, were sticking their necks out. As for the diving ducks, such as pochard and tufted duck, they were even easier meat for Crusoe, and he took several eider down to the bottom. Once, even a great northern diver went west.
All of which led him, one day, to bite off more than he could chew.
Another year had gone by. Father had been home on leave twice, marveling each time at Crusoe’s growth. He was now nearly two and a half years old, and Father and Grumble were beginning to get worried. How much longer can he stay here? they asked each other. How long will the fish last? How long before he’s so big that concealment in such a small loch is impossible?
One day in the late summer of 1932, something happened that made them worry even more.
It was the afternoon of a calm warm day, and Crusoe was taking his usual nap. It was his custom to have a good rest between the morning’s and the evening’s hunting, and as always, he slept underwater, rising for air at intervals. These, since he was so much bigger, could be as long as fifteen minutes. Now, as he floated very slowly up, nose tilted ready to draw an automatic breath, his snout bumped gently on something hard and he awoke. Sinking back down a little, he looked upward at the dark object that lay on the surface above his head. It was large, almost as large as himself, and was pointed at one end and squared off at the other. It was not moving.
What could that be? thought the Water Horse.
At that moment there was a little splash at some distance from the thing, and Crusoe swam over to investigate. But the length of line, with its hook and its silvery spinner, meant nothing to him, and he swam back beneath the dark object. He would have liked to stick his head out of the water and have a good look at it, but this, he knew, the giants would not like. They could not complain, surely, if he just took a little bite out of it?
Crusoe swam up, opened his jaws wide, and bit through the bottom of the boat.
Mother and the children had gone down to the beach and Grumble was alone in the small white house when he heard a knock at the door. He opened it, and there stood Postie, white-faced and dripping wet.
“Why, Mr. Macnab!” said Grumble. Postie, he knew, kept an old half-rotten dinghy tied up by the lochan and in his off-duty hours would sometimes try for the huge old pike that local folk believed to be lurking in its depths. “Did you tumble in, now?” he said.
“Tumble in!” said Postie. “Man, there’s something awful big in the lochan! I felt a wee bump under the boat just before I cast, and then next minute there was a crunching noise and something tore the bottom out of her. A hole the size of a frying pan there was, and the water pouring in! She sank before I could get her to shore, you know. Boat, rod, and tackle—I’ve lost it all. I was near drowned!”
You were near eaten, too, thought Grumble. He pulled thoughtfully at his mustache.
“What a pike that must be, Mr. Macnab,” he said solemnly. “A monster, by the sound of it.”
“That was no pike,” said Postie. He cleared his throat. “Tell me now,” he said hesitantly, “you live nearby…do you think there’s anything living in the lochan?”
“Oh, aye!” said Grumble. “There’s fish aplenty.”
“I don’t mean fish,” said Postie. “I mean…have you ever seen…”—he dropped his voice to a whisper—“could it be…the kelpie?”
“Oh, Mr. Macnab,” said Grumble, “you’re surely not going to tell folk there’s a kelpie in the lochan? I’m not saying that such creatures don’t exist—there was one in Loch Morar when I was a boy—but for a man in your position to be saying such a thing, why, it would be most unwise.”
“Unwise?” said Postie.
“Yes,” said Grumble. “If it got about that someone like you—a responsible public servant entrusted with the delivery of His Majesty’s Mail for miles around—was talking about seeing monsters, why, the powers that be in the Post Office might begin to doubt your fitness for the job. And there’s a great deal of unemployment about these days, Mr. Macnab, so there is.”
Postie stood and dripped for a moment. “So there is,” he said. “Maybe you’ll say nothing about this?”
“Not a word,” said Grumble, and then, as if to seal the promise, “Now, you mustn’t catch cold, so you’ll take a wee dram with me before you go?”
“It could have been very nasty,” he said later, when Mother and the children had heard the tale, “but I don’t think Postie will say anything.”
“Crusoe was good, though, wasn’t he?” said Kirstie.
“Good?”
“Well, he didn’t show himself.”
“No, but he smashed up Postie’s boat,” said Mother.
“He shivered its timbers,” said Angus.