If we can make enough smoke, make enough noise till the sun goes down, they'll settle somewhere else, perhaps. " Old Stephen yelled at the houseboy. But they went on with the work of the farm just as usual, until one day, when they were coming up the road to the homestead for the midday break, old Stephen stopped, raised his finger, and pointed.
There it was even more like being in a heavy storm. The telephone was ringing—neighbors to say, Quick, quick, here come the locusts! But it's only early afternoon. What is cursing mean. Old Smith had already had his crop eaten to the ground. And then, still talking, he lifted the heavy petrol cans, one in each hand, holding them by the wooden pieces set cornerwise across the tops, and jogged off down to the road to the thirsty laborers. The locusts were flopping against her, and she brushed them off—heavy red-brown creatures, looking at her with their beady, old men's eyes while they clung to her with their hard, serrated legs. If we can stop the main body settling on our farm, that's everything.
The locusts were coming fast. One does not look so much at the sky in the city. "The main swarm isn't settling. Margaret had been on the farm for three years now. She never had an opinion of her own on matters like the weather, because even to know about a simple thing like the weather needs experience, which Margaret, born and brought up in Johannesburg, had not got. What is cursing words. He picked a stray locust off his shirt and split it down with his thumbnail; it was clotted inside with eggs. Margaret supplied them. But at this she took a quick look at Stephen, the old man who had farmed forty years in this country and been bankrupt twice before, and she knew nothing would make him go and become a clerk in the city.
Out came the servants from the kitchen. By now, the locusts were falling like hail on the roof of the kitchen. But the gongs were still beating, the men still shouting, and Margaret asked, "Why do you go on with it, then? Soon they had all come up to the house, and Richard and old Stephen were giving them orders: Hurry, hurry, hurry. He looked at her disapprovingly. Everywhere, fifty miles over the countryside, the smoke was rising from a myriad of fires. Cursing is a sign of. Beautiful it was, with the sky on fair days like blue and brilliant halls of air, and the bright-green folds and hollows of country beneath, and the mountains lying sharp and bare twenty miles off, beyond the rivers. In the meantime, thought Margaret, her husband was out in the pelting storm of insects, banging the gong, feeding the fires with leaves, while the insects clung all over him. Stephen impatiently waited while Margaret filled one petrol tin with tea—hot, sweet, and orange-colored—and another with water. It sounded like a heavy storm. We'll all three have to go back to town. There were seven patches of bared, cultivated soil, where the new mealies were just showing, making a film of bright green over the rich dark red, and around each patch now drifted up thick clouds of smoke. Then up came old Stephen from the lands.
Now there was a long, low cloud advancing, rust-colored still, swelling forward and out as she looked. It's thirsty work, this. The men were her husband, Richard, and old Stephen, Richard's father, who was a farmer from way back, and these two might argue for hours over whether the rains were ruinous or just ordinarily exasperating. "How can you bear to let them touch you? " Quick, get your fires started!
The farm was ringing with the clamor of the gong, and the laborers came pouring out of the compound, pointing at the hills and shouting excitedly. But she was getting to learn the language. And then there are the hoppers. When she looked out, all the trees were queer and still, clotted with insects, their boughs weighted to the ground. The cookboy ran to beat the rusty plowshare, banging from a tree branch, that was used to summon the laborers at moments of crisis. They all stood and gazed. This swarm may pass over, but once they've started, they'll be coming down from the north one after another. Behind the reddish veils in front, which were the advance guard of the swarm, the main swarm showed in dense black clouds, reaching almost to the sun itself. For, of course, while every farmer hoped the locusts would overlook his farm and go on to the next, it was only fair to warn the others; one must play fair. Here were the first of them. She held her breath with disgust and ran through the door into the house again. "All the crops finished.
Margaret looked out and saw the air dark with a crisscross of the insects, and she set her teeth and ran out into it; what the men could do, she could. Margaret was wondering what she could do to help. Margaret was watching the hills. Nor did they get very rich; they jogged along, doing comfortably. And then: "Get the kettle going. The houseboy ran off to the store to collect tin cans—any old bits of metal. She still did not understand why they did not go bankrupt altogether, when the men never had a good word for the weather, or the soil, or the government. Asked Margaret fearfully, and the old man said emphatically, "We're finished. They are heavy with eggs.
"We're finished, Margaret, finished! " In the meantime, he told her about how, twenty years back, he had been eaten out, made bankrupt by the locust armies. The sky made her eyes ache; she was not used to it. Then came a sharp crack from the bush—a branch had snapped off. Overhead, the air was thick—locusts everywhere.