178 THE BOOK OF THE OPEN AIR 



until the tide has finished ebbing. Whilst I am lighting the fire and 

 And certainly the spiteful looking little getting the kettle on the way, sit you 

 fish does grievously hurt with the ugly in the stern-sheets, and listen to the 

 spines of his first dorsal fin ; and, various bird-cries that make musical 

 moreover, is exceedingly adroit in the eventide. The young crescent 

 stabbing with them, as I have on moon, strengthening as the gloaming 

 more than one occasion determined deepens, touches the rippling tide and 

 by experiments. In a box in the boat the moist flats with silver, and a star 

 we observe several score smelts care- or two look at themselves as in an 

 fully " laid forth," so that neither fin abyss, reflected miles below us ! Throw 

 nor scale shall be broken or disarranged, this blanket round your shoulders, 

 Clarke will hurry these away in boxes for the air is moistening, and the cattle 

 by the mail train, and they will grace on the marsh behind us are lost sight 

 the tables of the London parvenu to- of in the quick-rising steam-like 

 morrow. We settle for a chat on marsh mists. Didn't you note just 

 birds that Jary has lately seen, and now the quack of passing fowl ? I 

 booked ; and pick out a big white heard the " whiz-whiz " of their wings 

 prawn (Palcemon squilla), a pretty distinctly : and now ! hearken to the 

 little squid (Sepolia rondeletti\ and bleat of that snipe. A lot of red- 

 some isopod crustaceans which we find shanks are piping on the flat there ; 

 among a lot of shrimps, trawled up you can see them like black dots in 

 in the afternoon, lying in a " ped " the silver streak of the moonlight on 

 in the stern-sheets of the house-boat, the opalescent mud. " Pleu ! pleu! 

 What a dreary time six months' vigil pleu ! " That's the shrill call of a 

 on this great lagoon would be without greenshank feeding in the " low " at 

 an occasional spell of recreation in the other end of the rond. He is 

 the midst of it. always prating, no matter how em- 

 The tide has reached its highest ployed ; and he varies his clanguor 

 level, and twilight will soon be on us : scarcely half a note. Not so those 

 we out with our quant and push up curlews feeding somewhere to the 

 the winding drain that ends its sinuous southward : you may pretty clearly 

 way a short boat's length from the guess their doings by the variety of 

 house-boat Moorhen. their notes. The curlew will scream a 

 * * * high-pitched note when you suddenly 



