Chapter Sixteen.
Where the Quails came from.
In the spring the quails come in from the west, and one September morning I went out into the standing oat-crops with two other guns, each one of us attended by a little Kaffir lad to retrieve the birds. By noon we had traversed and re-traversed in line the upper lands and low lands, bagging 98 brace, and then in the glare of the mid-day we took shelter in the shade of a yellow-wood tree. There we argued the ever-recurring theme of the coming of the quail.
In August there is not a quail to all seeming in the land, but suddenly, as the spring advances, there comes from every thicket of grass and square of growing corn on the coast the whistling call of the male bird—‘phee—phe—yew’ calling in bird language, ‘where are you?—where are you?’ and the answering cry of the modest mate—‘phee—phee’—“here—here.” Whence do they come—these thousands of birds that throng along the coast? On that point regularly as September came round, as the 12-bore gun was taken down, and the cartridges filled with Number 6, we talked greatly, setting forth many theories. Silas Topper was of opinion that the quails spent their time in travelling round the continent of Africa in four huge armies, covering 500 miles from front to rear, and that while one was passing along the southern coast, the second army would be going north somewhere above the Zambesi, while the third would be traversing the shores of the Mediterranean, and the fourth skirting of Gold Coast. We all agreed that was a very good theory, and one deserving more credence than the crude, but positive, assertion of Amos Topper that the quail was originally a frog.
“It stands to reason,” Amos would say, “that a quail is developed from a frog. If ’tain’t so, what becomes of all the frogs?—tell me that. Take a caterpillar. A caterpillar comes from an egg, and a cocoon comes from a caterpillar, and a butterfly from a cocoon.”
“But a quail isn’t a butterfly.”
“Chuts! A tadpole comes from an egg, doesn’t it? Well, a frog comes from a tadpole, and a quail comes from a frog. That’s clear enough, ain’t it?”
Then, of course, the argument would start, and this particular September morning we had got well into the frog theory when old Abe Pike came along.
“I don’t mind if I do,” he said, as he sat down and selected a plump bird that Amos had carefully prepared for his own eating. He had opened it out by a cut down the breast bone, laid the broad bare back on the wood coals, and in the cup-like cavities of the breast had placed a pat of butter, with pepper and salt. The juices of the bird had gathered in these cavities, and Amos had just cut off a slice of bread to serve as a plate when old Pike forestalled him.
“That’s my bird,” said Topper, fiercely.
“Just yeard you say ’twas a frog,” grunted Abe, as he dug his knife into the earth to clean it.
“I said it was a frog, but it’s a sure enough bird now—blow you!”
“Go slow, sonny, go slow,” said Abe, between the mouthfuls. “Stick to one thing at a time. Once a frog always a frog.”
“Humph,” said Amos, as he picked out another bird from the heap. “I s’pose you never heard frogs whistling of a night?”
“Well, of course.”
“What do they whistle for, eh, if they’re not fitting themselves for the bird life—tell me that?” And Amos looked at us triumphantly.
“They whistle for the rain, you donderkop.”
“P’raps, then, you can tell us where these birds come from, as you’re so mighty clever.”
“To be sure, sonny, to be sure; they come from the clouds.”
“Oh, thunder!”
“Yes; from the clouds, or maybe higher. I s’pose you yeard of the people of Israel and how they were fed in the wilderness with manna and quail. Where d’you expect those birds came from? Frogs! No; they just dropped from the sky, and they’ve kep’ on droppin’ ever since in the spring.”
“Go along! There’s no people wandering in the wilderness in these days.”
“I seed ’em.”
“The Israelites?”
“No; the quail a-falling out the roof of the world. I’ll tell you how it came about that I diskivered this secret that’s been kep’ locked up all these hundreds of years. I’d been a-fishin’ off the great rock that stands out of the breakers over there yonder by the Kasouga, an’ the spring tide, rolling in with a great heave, made a boilin’ foam ’twixt me an’ the beach. I were fixed there for the night, sure enough; an’ I tell you what, sonny, when a man is brought face to face in the black of the night with the leaping sea, he don’t forget the time. Noise! by gum! You know what it is to be waked all of a sudden out of a sleep a full mile from the sea by the smacking crash of a great wave, and there I was in the very thick of the thunderation, with the big black breakers swishing out of the dark like a movin’ wall, and jus’ leapin’ agin the rock as though they were bent on sweeping it away. The white foam went flying above, drenching me through and through—and it grew so slippery up above on that table size top, that I was obliged to lay full stretched on my back with my heels agin a crack, and my arms outstretched—and my eyes fixed on the stars above whenever I could see them through the flying scud. Even a spring tide turns—and in the darkness before the early morning I could feel the rock under me growing firmer. I was just thinking o’ getting to the shore to dry myself in the white sand when I yeard a queer sound from the sky. There’s just one thing wanting to this yer quail.”
“What’s that?”
“Just a dash of Dop brandy.”
I passed him over the stone demijohn, and we listened to the cluck of the liquor as it poured into the tin komeky.
“Yes; out of the black of the sky there came a sort of sound that goes before a storm; and, boys, it licks me how such a shadder of a noise can come on in advance.”
“It’s the way with shadows,” said Amos, drily.
“Soh! but it’s a queer thing to hear the hum of a wind-storm before the wind comes along; jes’ ’sif th’re messages going ahead to warn critturs and trees to stand firm. Well, I squinted around, and bymby, as the light grew, far above I seed a something movin’, and the noise of its coming grew. ’Twas no bigger’n a umbrella when I fixed it; but it soon spread out, wider and wider, and what was the curiosest, it lengthened out behind like my old concertina. I tell you, I begun to get skeered, for I thought maybe ’twas one o’ them water-spouts. Then the light grew stronger and there was a twinkling from the growing column jes’ if thousands and thousands o’ poplar leaves was stirred by the wind. ‘’Tis alive,’ I said, jumping to my feet, and I scaled down that rock and scooted through the pools, and up over the sand hills to the shelter of the woods. I thought it was one o’ them here sea-serpents.”
“But it was not?”
“No sonny; it was a heaven-high column of quail. That’s what it were.”
“Falling from the moon, eh?”
“When the head of the column reached the ground, which it did, on the beach the whole length just collapsd like a falling tree, and the whole lot were just scattered along the coast in a twinkling.”