QUEST OF THE FIREBIRDS 241 



increase the working stock. 



So, I was not altogether unhappy when I received a letter 

 from the Museum requesting me to go to Santo Domingo and 

 collect a series of He?mdactylus lizards for experimental pur- 

 poses. Several weeks later I gathered together all my materials 

 and engaged passage on one of the rare passing steamers for 

 Port au Prince, Haiti. I closed the door of my little hut, saw 

 my friend the spider emerge after I was out of its short sight 

 and begin to weave its web across the lintel. I wondered if 

 I would ever see the hut where I had spent so many quiet 

 hours again. And, as the lumbering old Dutch freighter passed 

 the rocks of rny cliff I caught a brief glimpse of its brown roof 

 nestling between the leaves. It seemed very tiny across the ex- 

 panse of blue water. 



I asked the captain if I might climb the mast for a last look 

 at the island. From the height of the crow's nest I could see 

 the full extent of the saltpond a mile inland glittering in the 

 sunlight. A bright pink mass in one corner showed the posi- 

 tion of the last remaining group of flamingos still in the lake. 

 All the others which for weeks had stalked in its shallows had 

 gone inland. Even as I looked the pink mass began to pulse, 

 then broke into a scattering of scarlet motes. The flock climbed 

 high in the sky, turned toward the beach, circled above the 

 hut, and then with a faint crying noise, scarcely audible above 

 the swish of the water, turned inland. In a few minutes they 

 were gone and as the distance increased the island became a 

 long thin line of green that faded into the haze and disap- 

 peared from the face of the earth. 



Of what befell me on the Island of Hispaniola, of how I 

 languished in a Dominican jail because a stupid official could 

 not read my permit to carry a collecting revolver, and of how 

 I quite inadvertently started a small inquisition, and in turn 

 had the revenge of seeing half a town incarcerated in the same 



