FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF A DUNLIN. 21 
‘““ However did you escape ?’’ asked my brother, as I lay panting but safe 
amidst my family. 
“T don’t know,” I replied, faintly ; for now that the excitement was over, 
I felt positively sick with fear. 
It was not until near the end of August that father said it was time we 
left the Fells and began our journey southwards to our winter quarters; and 
before starting he gave us much advice concerning the dangers that we should 
have to encounter on the way. Most of our actual travelling was to be done 
by night, and having united with several other families that had bred upon 
the moor, we began to gradually work our way down the East coast. All went 
well until we reached the shore of Lincolnshire. It was misty weather when 
we got there, and many of our party flew into the long nets, which the fowlers 
here spread across the sand, and became entangled in their deadly meshes. 
We crossed the Wash by night in similar weather, and despite father’s frequent 
calls it was a difficult matter to keep within touch of one another. All of a 
sudden a blaze of distant light appeared in the midst of the darkness, and by 
a common impulse our whole company made straight for this guiding torch ; 
ignoring the warnings of several older birds—Terns, Waders, Chats, Swal- 
lows, Warblers—all fluttered madly towards the glare; but it went out 
suddenly even as it had appeared; we lost the line, and most of us passed just 
clear of a large stone erection, which I afterwards heard was a lighthouse. 
One of my sisters, indeed, who had judged the direction only too accurately, 
flew against its glass windows and fell a mangled corpse into the sea. Father 
said it was the revolving light that had saved us, and that in the old days 
when the lights were stationary many more used to be attracted to their 
doom. 
And now we had reached a nice quiet estuary on the Norfolk coast, where 
father proposed to spend a week or so before proceeding further on our way. 
We scattered a bit as soon as it was light, and I passed the first morning 
snapping up small crustacea on some succulent ooze around an aged smack, 
that lay anchored in one of the most secluded creeks. Here I made the 
acquaintance of a small party of Turnstones, who pottered about amongst the 
stones and garbage not ten yards from the side of the smacks Two men were 
sitting on it, and I heard one of them say: ‘‘ Well, Bob, what price your 
chicken to-morrow morning ?”’ 
I don’t know why, but a queer sensation came over me, though I did not 
understand what he meant, and when I met father in the evening I told him 
what I had heard. He said he didn’t like it: he was at all events glad he was 
not one of the Turnstones, and when mother said that she thought to-morrow 
