FEATHERED TOURISTS 



realized that my pity was needless, my sympathy 

 was engendered only by my human conceit, for my 

 eyes suddenly sensed that from the moment I first 

 saw the bird he had been gaining altitude — at first 

 so gradually that my brain refused to record the 

 diminution — and now more swiftly. I did not dare 

 to wink; now and then I confused the brave sand- 

 piper with some mote in my eye's circulation, but 

 before he passed wholly and forever beyond my 

 view I saw the last spiral straighten out, and with 

 elemental directness, high above the stratum of 

 head wind, he sped straight out to sea, with a 

 strength and assurance which streamed through the 

 last thin column of vision between the beating wings 

 of the bird and my eye. My straining eyes compelled 

 a wink, and there was left in my glasses only a 

 round view of blue sky with a cottony cloud in the 

 lower left-hand corner. 



As I walked back to my laboratory table and my 

 neglected Pseudoscopelus, my ears again demanded 

 attention, not for present audibility but for what 

 they had been recording while I was just one large 

 eye. Only now I realized that one of the most as- 

 tonishing things about the whole occurrence was the 

 penetrating clarity with which the sweet, high call 

 of the bird had continued — r when — when — when 

 — when! I thought back and a cunning self-record- 

 ing part of my brain intimately connected with the 

 switchboard of my ears, told me accurately that 

 I had heard the voice of the yellow-legs until the 

 second spiral — a spiral which, in my ignorance, I 



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