A CREEK OF THE KONKAN. 25 



breakfast time, and the mullet come in handy, so the gunners are 

 -called aft and the meal cooked and served — a trifle roughly perhaps. 

 Suddenly, while every one is busy with his plate, there is a 

 tremendous rush in the air and splash in the water not half a cable 

 off. One's first idea is that of a bolt fallen from the blue; but 

 before the spray has well got back to the surface, an osprey emerges 

 from it with a two-pound mullet in his claws and sails off to an islet, 

 where his breakfast-table lias been established for many generations. 

 As the boat rounds it, the scene is extremely beautiful. A new 

 lake, near six miles long and four wide, opens before us, the shore 

 still mountainous and well wooded, the islands covered with 

 mangrove. The wind has now shifted to the westward, and the 

 boat is close-hauled, but makes good way with the help of the 

 ebb. Tbe gunners have not gone forward after breakfast ; but 

 presently there is some stir and muttering in the bows, and the word 

 is passed aft ot " Rohis," that is flamingoes. Sure enough the 

 field glass shows a flock of large, white birds swimming in deep 

 water nearly a mile ahead, and the boat goes about twice to get a 

 good weather-gauge of them —always necessary in sailing to birds. 

 We get out a rifle, for it is likely enough that they will not allow 

 us within small -shot range, and at about eighty yards they close 

 together and rise in a cloud, but one falls to the double shot, and is 

 presently aboard and being admired as he deserves. Not only is 

 he strange in shape and beautiful in colour, but a very good bird 

 for the tabb, being, it must be remembered, simply a great 

 outlandish goose. 



We have now a head wind and but little left of the ebb tide that 

 has favoured us so far. The canvas dinghy is folded up and hauled 

 aboard and oars got out to windward, and although the noxt islet 

 shows us a group of oyster catchers on its rocky beach, and a family 

 of otters are diving and playing at the edge of the mangrove swamp, 

 the guns are covered and stowed away. As we round the next 

 point leaving the lake behind there comes into sight ahead a great 

 black mass of towers and walls standing sheer out of the creek and 

 beyond it a water horizon, and we run up our tiny flag. It is ten 

 to one if the fortmen can see its colours at all ; but our sail is of a 

 cut unusual in these waters, and presently there is a movement 

 visible on one of the towers, a great flag rises slowly on its halyards, 

 and a puff of smoke hides tower and flag for a moment, to be followed 

 by another and another, until we have got our proper greeting. 

 4 



