Chapter Seventeen.
Abe Pike and the Ghon-ya.
Old Abe had strolled over to my place to see a new Harvester tried on a good crop of wheat. In the previous reaping season I had been left suddenly in the lurch by my Kaffirs, who had silently vanished in the night for other scenes without a word of explanation, or a single regret for the loss they would put me to, and I determined to be prepared in future for such another vagary. Hence the Harvester, which reaped the corn and bound up the sheaves, aided only by one man and a boy. We were just sweeping clear the last square in the small field when Abe came up and hung himself on the fence, with his back bent like a bow, and his toes hitched under the lower wire. There, all bunched up, he eyed the machine in silence.
“Well, Uncle, what do you think of it?” I said, with some pride, as the last sheaf was tossed on one side by the human-like grippers.
He looked at me vacantly, then climbed slowly down, examined the sheaf and the tie, and then took a look all round the country.
“Things is changing,” he said.
“Yes; this is the age of progress and electricity.”
“And snorting steam engines and that there man machine—that thing without a heart, or a stomach, or eyes to see. Where’s the good?”
“It is a labour-saving machine, and enables me to produce more.”
“’Tis all vanity, an’ foolishness, an laziness—that’s what. Laziness and pride,” and the old sinner, who never did a fair day’s work in a month, wore an air of virtuous indignation as he resumed his seat on the fence.
“Things is changing—that’s so; and mankind’s on the down track. Time was when a reaper would take his sickle and harken to the rustlin’ of the yaller corn as he cut his way along, with the smell o’ the yearth in his nostrils, and the sight of all manner o’ living insects below him. And bymby he would straighten his back and look away over the land, or at the shining layers behind, and then he would stoop to it again with the thoughts busy in his mind as bees about a comb concerning the going out of the wheat in waggons an’ trains, an’ ships across the sea to the feeding of the nations. An’ look at this yer cast-iron reaper; what’s it good for but to work for a cast-iron man? That’s what’s the world’s comin’ to, with all the people cast in a mould. I’m gwine home!”
“Nonsense; come back with me and try the new lot of rolled tabak from the Transvaal.”
For all his disgust with the Harvester, Uncle Abe did not mind “riding,” to the house on the driver’s seat; neither was he cast down after supper when he sat out on the stoep. The day’s work was done for man and beast and the great quiet of the evening brooded over the place. There we sat and smoked in silence, until the glow died out of the sky, when the night creatures began to stir, sending forth inquiring notes as if to assure themselves that the time was really at hand for the starting of the wonderful orchestra of the insect band. And, as we listened, there rang out above the shrill drummings and chirpings and whistling, the weird, mournful cry of the “ghon-ya,” calling “ghon-ya!” “ghon-ya!” at regular intervals, until the melancholy of its far-reaching cry stilled the other noisy voices.
Abe stirred uneasily. “There’s the lost sperrit,” he muttered.
“Why, that’s the night locust!”
“Soh; jes’ a locust.”
“Yes, with a transparent drum in place of a body which he blows out when he wishes to make that noise, and rubs his legs upon the drum.”
“How big is this yer drum?”
“About as large as a hen’s egg.”
“So; and with such a small thunder-bag he can send out a noise that booms further than the greatest drum in the British army. Don’t tell me. That’s no insect; it’s a cry that comes from beyond.”
“Beyond where?”
“Beyond the dark. I tell you, sonny, when the ghon-ya cries he ain’t bothering himself about any glass-eyed beetle-hunter who’s just hankering to label all the critturs in this yearth; he’s not thinkin’ about you nor me, but he’s jes’ wailing in that shudderous voice to the shadders that pass by in the night; whether it’s to comfort ’em, or to put ’em on the right track, or to warn ’em of danger, I can’t say. One night I had taken the short cut past the big krantz, being late from the shop where I’d been for a tin of o’ black sugar, and thinkin’ of nothin’ at all when I yeard the ghon-ya’s cry passin’ overhead. There was nothin’ more’n ordinary solemn in the wail of it, but when I came to the thick of the wood it seemed to me there was a queer whisperin’ going on among the trees. Have you ever marked a bee against the shadder? Of course you have, and you’ll know how he moves like a drop o’ light as the sun strikes on his wings against the dark of the hill behind. Well, I happened to look back over my shoulder to the other side of the valley where ’twas as black as black, and in the glance of my eyes, with the blue and red light snapping from ’em as it does sometimes when you blink, in that very moment of turning, I seed a passing of a many shadders.”
“Tree shadows?”
“Shadders of dreams, sonny, I tell you. Jes’ in a flash I seed ’em moving up, and then all was black groups of trees; but I knowed where that whisperin’ come from. Yes, a many shadders hurryin’ on up that valley with the cry of the ‘ghon-ya’ pealin’ out ahead. Well, I got outer that valley pretty quick, and were hurryin’ by the top of the krantz overlooking the big kloof when the ‘ghon-ya’ cried jes’ ahead o’ me. A locust! Lor’, sonny, right afore me there was a something shaddery—a darker patch on the blackness, standing on the brink of the krantz overlooking the deep kloof that lay below stretching towards the sea, and the ‘ghon-ya,’ loud, long, mournful as the solitary toll of the death-bell, went out on the air, an’ I jes’ went to the ground as if the bones had all been drawed out. Looking along the top, with my eyes to the light that was in the sky over the sea, I seed them shadders from the valley file down into the kloof. A many shadders, sonny, come out of the valley—passed by that dark patch, and jes’ floated down into the kloof—whispering as they went. What sort o’ shadders they were I couldn’t tell you, my lad; but they belong, sure enough, to the other world beyond the dark. Many a time I yeard them same things in the kloof, when the dead quiet has been broken by a movement in the air, and a sort o’ creepin’ sound ’sif somethin’ were peepin’ at you from behind a tree. You’ve felt it, too, of course. The dogs they know, ’cos they’re not so cock-sure as we are about knowin’ everything jes’ bekose we can make a cast-iron reaper.”
The ghon-ya from the darkness called again, as if the sorrows of the world were in the cry.
“A locust!” cried Abe scornfully; “that’s no locust. It’s calling the sperits of the woods together, and the ghostses of animiles—that’s what; and that’s why all the other noises is hushed.”