A high, piercing pipe sound likened to midges harassing the air, this simile makes me think of the horrifying tsssssssss sound of a mosquito around your ear just as you are about to sink into sleep. 

I also like the echo of the pipe, which may be played with a reed, and the reeds below the swarming bite-bugs.

Then a soldier beside him played a sort of shepherd’s pipe, emitting a thin, high sound, like midges above reeds. 

Source: Louis Golding, Good-bye to Ithaca (London: Hutchinson, 1955), p. 45

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