A TIRED TRAVELLER 99 



with brilliant stars as on a night of frost, ajid the stars 

 were reflected below us so that we seemed to be flying 

 between two starry skies, one above and one beneath. 

 I was frightened at that moving, black, gleaming sky 

 beneath 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 earthwards 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, sheltering 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 



