QUEST OF THE FIREBIRDS 259 



Early in the morning it quieted down somewhat, and I 

 awoke conscious that a new tone was swirhng off the lake. 

 It was the flamingos. They were no longer gabbling to them- 

 selves as though engaged in endless conversation; instead their 

 notes were louder, more penetrating and goose-like, shortened 

 and, it seemed, frightened. Crawling out of the tent, I walked 

 down to the shore and listened. Beyond the flock I could hear 

 a loud splashing as of some heavy creature. The flamingos 

 heard it too, and their voices raised in alarm. Waves of sound 

 broke over the flock, swept over acre after acre of birds and 

 then died down again only to start once more. Then, all at 

 once, there was deathly stillness, a quiet that seemed more 

 intense after the noise that had gone before. The silence lasted 

 for almost a minute, then with a thunderous burst there was 

 a shriek of a thousand voices and the throb of a thousand 

 pairs of wings. Like a great dark cloud the flamingos burst 

 into the sky, blotting out the stars and shielding the light of 

 the moon. The sound was such as I would imagine would fill 

 the sky on judgment day when all the graves of the centuries 

 would open and yield their doleful inhabitants to the heavens. 

 A great and sorrowful wail went echoing into the spaces of 

 the night and was lost in the emptiness. 



I took the boat and went over as soon as I finished break- 

 fast. The colony had grown since I first found it and a dozen 

 or two new nests were plastered over the boulders. These had 

 all had eggs in them but the panic of the night before had 

 destroyed them. In their hurry to get away the birds had 

 trampled on the shells and the ground was littered with broken 

 fragments, crushed embryos and bloody yolks. Out of the 

 entire lot only four eggs were still intact. 



In the hope that the main flock would return I went back 

 to the camp and slept most of the day where I would be out 

 of sight. But in the evening there were still no more birds, 



