46 What Birds Have Done With Me 



reeked of corruption, and made them sick at the 

 stomach. Necessity is the Mother of invention, 

 when they could no longer use their hats, they 

 tore the lining from the sleeve of an old jacket 

 they found on the shore, knotted it at one end and 

 had a sack for their dirt. The horrible, pesti- 

 lential odor got worse and worse; it strangled, 

 throttled them, and they could neither quit nor 

 go on. A merciful providence took the matter 

 out of their hands ; they suddenly heard noises at 

 the end of the tunnel, and using both hands as a 

 telescope, beyond a field of carrion fish-bones, they 

 could see the heads and open mouths of young 

 birds. One glance into each other's eyes, and 

 impelled by a common impulse, they fell over 

 each other in their efforts to get out of their 

 tunnel, they rolled over each other in their haste 

 to get down the bank and bury their perspiring 

 faces in the friendly water. It was delicious: 

 stripping off shirt and trousers, they plunged in 

 bodily, and like a good nurse in sickness, the lake 

 bathed their bodies, cooling the blood that for 

 hours had been almost at fever heat and washing 

 away the grime from face and hands but the 

 odor in their nostrils seemed beyond her, and did 

 not pass for hours; not, in fact, till sleep, the 

 great restorer, came with her poppy juice, that 

 wipes away the world and all things therein. 

 It began to thunder before morning, and the 



