CHAPTER XIII 



THE NEW STUDY OF BIRDS 



A day seldom passes when the long arm of 

 coincidence does not wave gently over my head. 

 At dawn one day in early April when I emerged 

 from my schooner tent I knew that I had one of my 

 rare reactions from work. I had dived too often, I 

 had glued my eyes to the microscope long after 

 my body had begged off, — in a word, I had gone 

 stale on submarine science. So I rowed me ashore 

 alone and curled up in my favorite, half-rotten 

 old boat, discarded long years ago and beached 

 forever in a sugar-cane field. And here my eyes 

 and ears and mind turned to birds, but even now I 

 resented any approach to direct facts, and my 

 mood exuded the following observation: 



*'I know several people, not otherwise criminally 

 insane, who dislike and are terrified by birds," 

 and so on in the same vein. By such vitriolic 

 effusions I purged my mind, and after lunch I 

 motored to the American Club and sought to rid 

 my body of scientific excesses. On the tennis 

 courts I paired with Lieutenant Halla, and we had 

 as enemies General Russell and Commander Wood 

 —my particular trio of gods in my Haitian Valhalla 

 of kindly hosts. It was hot even for Port-au- 



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