A TIRED TRAVELLER 99 



frightened at that moving, black, gleaming sky be- 

 neath me, and felt now that I was tired, and when 

 the flock rose higher and still higher I laboured to 

 rise with it. At intervals those who were leading 

 uttered cries to prevent the others from straggling, 

 and from far and near there were responsive cries; 

 but from the time that the dark, wetting cloud had 

 come over us I uttered no sound. Sometimes I opened 

 my beak and tried to cry, but no cry came; and 

 sometimes as we flew my eyes closed, then my wings, 

 and for a moment all sensation was lost, and I would 

 wake to find myself dropping, and would flutter 

 and struggle to rise and overtake the others. At last 

 a change came, a sudden warmth and sense of land, 

 a solid blackness instead of the moving, gleaming 

 sea beneath us, and immediately we dropped earth- 

 wards like falling stones, down into the long grass 

 by the shore. Oh, the relief it was to fold my wings 

 at last, to feel the ground under me, the close, shelter- 

 ing stems round and over me, to shut my tired eyes 

 and feel no more! 



"When morning came, the cries of my fellows woke 

 me : they were calling us up and going away over the 

 marshes to the green country; but I could not follow 

 nor make any response to their calls. I closed my 

 eyes again, and knew no more until the sun was high 

 above the horizon. All were gone then — even my own 

 mate had left me; nor did they know I was hidden 

 here in the grass, seeing that I had not answered to 

 the call. They thought perhaps that I had fallen out 

 a long way back, when the rain oppressed and drove 



