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As the sun warmed the world of stubble into a welter of yellow they turned from the highroad, through the bars of a farmer's gate, into a field, slowly bumping over the uneven earth. In a hollow of the rolling prairie they lost sight even of the country road. It was warm and placid. Locusts trilled among the dry wheat-stalks, and brilliant little flies hurtled across the buggy.
Locusts are not an uncommon pest in this country: already during the season, several smaller swarms had come up from the south, where, as apparently in all other parts of the world, they are bred in the deserts. The poor cottagers in vain attempted by lighting fires, by shouts, and by waving branches to avert the attack.
Every now and then we were overtaken by clouds of locusts, their little wings glistening like diamonds against the soft sky, or flocks of starlings darkened the air, or a serried line of wild geese passed majestically overhead. Then we came to the tents, and at our approach a dozen dogs rushed out to snap and snarl, and a hundred little naked children scampered and scuttled across the way.
And as for those Jesuits, he had no doubt that they did love France, the eldest daughter of the Church, and the only daughter that could yet help her mother to reconquer universal sovereignty, but they loved her even as the black swarms of locusts love the harvests which they swoop upon and devour.
And these leapt into the water as locusts leap into a river when a fire which men light drives them from the fields. And all the river was full of horses and men. Then Achilles leapt into the stream, leaving his spear on the bank, resting on the tamarisk trees. Only his sword had he, and with this he slew many; and they were as fishes which fly from some great dolphin in the sea.
But what could he ever have to do with the boy, who probably by this time, little puny thing that he was, was Lord Markland, and the owner of all this great, bare, unhappy-looking place, eaten up by the locusts of waste and ruin. The butler, an old servant, had been anxiously trying all this time to catch his eye.
It did not occur to him that in less than one year few of them might be alive, for all thought of any peril to his army and fleet from the insignificant numbers of the Greeks must have been dismissed with scorn from his mind. Like locusts the army marched southward through Thrace, eating up the cities as it advanced, for each was required to provide a day's meals for the mighty host.
He consented, and encamping around the warm springs, caused the broken wall to be repaired, and made ready to meet the foe. The Persian army were seen covering the whole country like locusts, and the hearts of some of the southern Greeks in the pass began to sink.
He exists in his personage, under the precipice, above the fjord, like a rude mediaeval anchorite, who eats his locusts and wild honey in the desert. We cannot comprehend the action of Brand by any reference to accepted creeds and codes, because he is so remote from the religious conventions as hardly to seem objectively pious at all.
The coolness of night was over the awakening earth, although the mounting sun was speedily drinking up the dew and rousing the locusts into droning song. Not a leaf stirred.
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