RAVENS, CURLEWS, AND EIDER-DUCKS 143 



almost, yet not quite, human must needs suggest fays, 

 elves, elementals, and all their company. I loved the 

 sound. If not quite music, it was most softly har- 

 monious, and always, from first to last, brought into 

 my mind with strange insistency, those lines in the 

 Tempest : 



"Sitting- on a bank, 

 Weeping again the King my father's wreck, 

 This music crept by me upon the waters, 

 Allaying both their fury and my passion 

 With its sweet air." 



Then, of course, I was on Prospero's island, though, 

 heaven knows, this bleak northern one was little like 

 it. Thus can some poor bird that we murder, by 

 an association merely, or called-up image, as well as 

 by actual song, 



" Dissolve us into ecstasies. 

 And bring all heaven before our eyes." 



It was some little time before I could be quite sure 

 to what bird this strange note belonged. It seemed 

 too poetical for a duck, though, indeed, an eider-duck 

 is the poetry of the family. Also, it was difficult to 

 locate, seeming to bear but little relation to the place 

 or distance at which it was uttered. But I soon found 

 that whenever there were eider-ducks I heard the note, 

 whereas I never did when they were nowhere about. 

 At last — quite close in a little bay, as though they had 

 come there to show me — I " tore out the heart of their 

 mystery." It was a lovely sight. Even the female 

 eider-duck, sober brown though she be, has a most 



