THE BIRDS AT THE TANK. 163 



looming in the vista of the future ? The only serious diffi- 

 culties are two wide gaps in the hedge, where there are 

 only three blades of grass and a small stone to shelter the 

 stalker, and, having successfully negotiated these, I go on 

 swimmingly up to the corner of the field, within five 

 minutes' crawl of my goal, and then discover, for the first 

 time, that a small party of kullum are on my side of the 

 hedge, and will see me the instant I turn the corner. It is 

 clear I should have gone round the opposite side of the 

 field and nothing remains but to do so now. I know no 

 way of putting down upon paper the tedium of wriggling 

 along the ground on your belly for a quarter of an hour, 

 and then wriggling back to your first point, for the sake of 

 starting on a fresh wriggle in the contrary direction ; but 

 if I did, it would do no good, for the reader would still be 

 as far as ever from realizing the peculiar sensations with 

 which, at the end of it all, you take in the fact that the 

 kullum are not, as you thought, thirty yards from the 

 hedge, but about a hundred and thirty, and that you have 

 got nothing for your pains but lumbago. It only exas- 

 perates my temper to lie and watch them moving slowly 

 about in all the gracefulness of their long drooping plumes 

 and silky-white ear-tufts, so I rise and show myself, and in 



