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."