UNDER THE MOON 111 



the sand-bar are cast by the powerful reflectors of 

 the pile-lighthouse, which, under the moonbeams, looks 

 for all the world like a huge straddle-legged spider vainly 

 endeavouring to escape the incoming tide. From high 

 overhead the " music " of a skein of grey-lags (the 

 progenitors of the domestic goose) returning to the tide 

 from their nocturnal feeding grounds inland is heard ; 

 the curlew pipes his weird, far-reaching cry as he skims 

 over the ooze-flats ; the " cackling " of mallard, or the 

 shrill " whe-oh " of a widgeon proclaim that worthier 

 fowl are also a- wing, and the calls of innumerable flocks 

 of plover, knots, dunlin, and many other kinds of waders, 

 sound harmoniously enough in comparison with the shriek 

 of that restless pest of the wildfowler — that feather 

 " hooligan " of the marsh and ooze-flats, the redshank. 



To one whose life is, from choice or necessity, spent 

 amongst " bricks and mortar," or who loves not queen 

 Nature and her wild creatures, a moonlight night, or 

 morning, spent in a gunning-punt under similar con- 

 ditions, and amidst such surroundings as in a simple 

 way I have endeavoured to depict herein, would doubt- 

 less prove dreary and monotonous enough. On the 

 other hand, the music of the wind and the waves is far 

 sweeter to the ear of the naturalist- gunner than the 

 grandest nocturne ever composed by the great master 

 Chopin. The call of every species of British duck and 

 wader is as familiar to him as his own voice, and the 

 grotesque forms assumed by the growths of glasswort, 

 sea lavender, and other kinds of salinaceous plants, 



