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Updated: June 26, 2025
I see the impudent intruder run nimbly under my elbow and penetrate forthwith into the tunnel abandoned by the death-watch. She is after game, this slender huntress, clad in black, busy collecting wood lice for her grubs. A whole nation is devouring you, you old table; I am writing on a swarm of insects! No support could be more appropriate to my entomological notes.
Every night the death-watch has ticked in Mel'dy's room the endurin' night. I don't sleep, you know, fit to support a flea. I hear every hour strike right straight along, and I know things that's hid from others, Mis' Penny, though I do say it. Last night as ever was I heard a sobbin' and a sighin' goin' round the house, as plain as I hear you this minute.
"But what manner of mischief, think you, meant he? Should it cast a spell on me, or give me the ague?" Little Will, as we have already seen, was the child of a superstitious mother. To hear the tap of a death-watch was sufficient to make Mistress Flint lose a night's sleep; and a person who disbelieved in fairies she would have considered next door to a reprobate.
One of your corners is broken off; the boards are beginning to come loose. Inside you, I hear, from time to time, the plane of the death-watch, who despoils old furniture. From year to year, new galleries are excavated, endangering your solidity. The old ones show on the outside in the shape of tiny round holes. A stranger has seized upon the latter, excellent quarters, obtained without trouble.
Howbeit it was not yet time to give up all hope, and he himself would never weary of his search: Young Kubbeling, who had meanwhile sent Uhlwurm with the leech to see the sick man and then taken his seat again with the wine-cup before him, had nevertheless kept one ear open, and had hearkened like the rest to what Ann had been saying; then on a sudden he thrust away his glass, shook his big fist in wrath, and cried out, to the door, as it were, through which Uhlwurm had departed, "That croaker, that death-watch, that bird of ill-omen!
"By the Lord Harry!" he cried, "is it thus you pass an old friend without a word, Captain Ireton?" 'Twas my good death-watch; that Lieutenant Tybee of the light-horse who had sunk the British officer in the man in that trying night at Appleby Hundred. I returned his hearty greeting as well as I might, and would have explained my present state and standing but that I was loath to lie to him.
It was evident his mind was working, and nothing was heard in the room for a minute but the tapping of his nails on the chair, like a death-watch. 'No, said Mr. Larkin again, 'I'm not suspicious naturally too much the reverse, I fear; but it certainly does look odd. Did he tell the family at Brandon? 'Certainly not, that I heard. He may have mentioned it.
The little insect which makes that weird ticking noise at night called in England the Death-watch has a Japanese relative named by the people Bimbomushi, or the 'Poverty-Insect. It is said to be the servant of Bimbogami, the God of Poverty; and its ticking in a house is believed to signal the presence of that most unwelcome deity.
No great chivalry or consideration of the feelings of one's opponent there! Here is a poem from the 'Volksstem' on August 26, 1899, weeks before the war, describing the Boer programme. A translation runs thus: 'Then shall our ears with pleasure listen To widow's wail and orphan's cry; And shall we gird, as joyful witness, The death-watch of your villainy.
Aubin's Bay with his pale freight, carried it on his shoulders up to the little house where he had lived so many years. There he kept the death-watch alone. Guida knew nothing of the arrest and trial of Mattingley until he had been condemned to death.
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