162 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 



and with the finest of umber-brown traceries at the 

 centre of their petals. The blues and purples may or 

 may not be sweet, but one can always count on the 

 faint fragrance of the white. 



We lay on the turf covering a ledge of smoky quartz 

 thrust like a wedge into the marsh. Across a country 

 of round green hills and fertile farms its squat bulk 

 stretched unafraid, an untamed monster of another 

 age. Beyond the long levels we could see Wolf 

 Island, where a hunted wolf -pack, protected by quag- 

 mires and trembling bogs, made its last stand two 

 centuries ago. Where a fringe of trees showed the 

 beginning of solid ground, a pair of hawks with long 

 black-barred tails wheeled and screamed through the 

 sky. "Geek, geek, geek, geek," they called, almost 

 like a flicker, except that the tone was flatter. As 

 they circled, both of them showed a snowy patch over 

 the rump, the field-mark of the marsh hawk. The 

 male was a magnificent blue-gray bird, whose white 

 under-wings were tipped with black like those of a 

 herring gull. We watched them delightedly, for the 

 rare nest of the marsh hawk, the only one of our 

 hawks which nests on the ground, was one of the 

 possibilities of the marsh. 



Suddenly we heard from behind us a sound that 

 sent us crawling carefully up to the crest of the ridge. 

 It was like the pouring of water out of some gigan- 

 tic bottle or the gurgling suck of an old-fashioned 

 pump: "Bloop bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop" it 

 came to us with a strange subterranean timbre. The 

 last time I had heard that note was in the pine- 



