58 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



have in the larder — pewit, redshank, curlew, or 

 gull — goes down very well when you are hungry. 



Later I go on to the sea, meeting the last of the 

 fishers, or toilers in the sands, returning before dark; 

 men and boys in big boots and heavy wet clothes, 

 burdened with spades and forks and baskets of bait 

 and shell-fish. With slow, heavy feet they trudge 

 past and leave the world to darkness and to me. 



On one of these evenings as I stood on the ridge 

 of the dunes, looking seaward, when the tide was out 

 and the level sands stretched away to the darkening 

 horizon, an elderly woman made her appearance, and 

 had evidently come all that way down to give her dog 

 an evening run. Climbing over the ridge, she went 

 down to the beach, where the dog, a big rough-haired 

 terrier, was so delighted with the smooth sands that 

 he began careering round her in wide circles at his 

 utmost speed, barking the while with furious joy. 

 The sound produced an extraordinary effect; it was 

 repeated and redoubled a hundred-fold from all over 

 the flat sands. It was my first experience of an echo 

 of that sort heard from above — perhaps if I had been 

 below there would have been no echo — but I could 

 not understand how it was produced. It was not 

 like other echoes — exact repetitions of the sounds 

 emitted which come back to us from walls and woods 

 and cliffs — but was fainter and more diffused, the 

 sounds running into each other and all seeming to 

 run over the flat earth, now here, now there, and 

 fading into mysterious whisperings. It was as if the 

 vigorous barkings of the living dog had roused the 



