Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/188

 THE FLIGHT OF CHÊP, THE BIRD

NA large Sâkai camp on the banks of the upper reaches of the Jělai River, at a point some miles above the last of the scattered Malay villages, the annual harvest home was being held one autumn night in the year of grace 1893. The occasion of the feast was the same as that which all tillers of the soil are wont to celebrate with bucolic rejoicings, when the year's crop has been got in; and the name which I have applied to it awakens the perennial nostalgia of the exile by conjuring up the picture of many a long summer day in the quiet country at Home. Again, in imagination, he watches the loaded farm-wains labouring over the grass or lumbering down the leafy lanes; again the scent of the hay is in his nostrils, and the soft English gloaming—so delicious by contrast with the short-lived twilight of the tropics—is lingering over the land. The reapers astride upon the load exchange their barbarous badinage with those who follow afoot; the pleasant glow of health, that follows upon a long day of hard work in the open air, warms the blood; and in the eyes of all is the light of expectation, born of the thought of the good red meat, and the lashings of ale and cider, awaiting them at the farmhouse two miles across the meadows.