crawled under! On, on it went, surrounding the king's palaces and
choking up his forts! Down, down it grew into the brooks and rivers,
and out into the king's harbors, where the tendrils seized and wound
about his ships of war riding at anchor, and climbed up the masts,
while melons grew on the decks till the vessels sank to the bottom!
It choked up and drank up all the rivers and lakes in the kingdom, or
dammed them up so the waters overflowed the land, drowning people and
cattle, and sweeping away houses and barns!

On, on it grew--melons, melons everywhere! Ruin and starvation stared
the nation in the face; while poor, poor Nimble Jim, hid within the
rind of the melon he had dug out, shivered, cried and bewailed his
folly.

"I'll be killed! I'll be killed! The people will murder me!" he
shrieked. But no one of them all save his mother knew he had had
anything to do with bringing on the dire calamity that had befallen
the kingdom.

Then some of the people proposed: "Let us go immediately to our king,
and ask him to make a law that the vine shall stop growing ere it ruin
us forever."

But when they had eaten and hewed their way to the palace, they found
the king had gone to count his soldiers; and while he was gone the
vine came galloping along, and an enormous melon grew and blocked up
the palace gate. So they had to help the king and his guards force
their way through to the hall of audience.

When they all were in, and the king had wiped the melon-juice off his