MAESH BIRDS. 87 



two a.m. we thus turned out to see what the weather was 

 like. There was an arctic stillness in the air and almost an 

 arctic dryness. The wide sweep of sky overhead, dotted by 

 a thousand stars, was glittering with wonderful brilliancy, 

 and the gleam of the land under its snowy mantle just 

 showed its whereabouts. The only sounds audible were 

 the noise of thin ice floes grinding together in the filling 

 creeks, the tinkle of salt w^ater falling through sluice gates, 

 and, tuneful to the listening wild-fowler's ear, came the 

 sound of the moving birds feeding and flying over salt 

 wastes and estuaries, the chorus of the ducks inveighing 

 against such " hard times " near some water hole, the whistle 

 of restless widgeon, varied every now and then by those 

 wildest of all sea bird's notes, the " troomp " of wild geese, 

 or the unearthly booming of a heron. 



By six o'clock we had thrown off our frozen warps and 

 dropped down the creek as the day came. We stole along 

 quietly under the high banks, making hardly a sound in the 

 still cool air of the morning, until over our sorrel, samphire, 

 and sea grass sky line, fche skipper sees a couple of curlew 

 coming up, and putting us on the look-out by an expressive 

 wave of his short black pipe, tight between his lips since 

 "the ship " got under weigh. Both curlews pay the penalty 

 of their rashness, coming down headlong into the water with 

 a loud splash, and are brought into the boat as she goes by 

 with the help of a landing-net on a long staff, a fair begin- 

 ning, since the old rhyme says that 



" A curlew, be she white or black, 

 Still carries tenpence on her back." 



Then a shingle point is turned, the boat sliding into 

 more open water, where she " goes about " and steals up as 

 near as she dares to the edge of the flats. The skipper's 

 practised eyes soon make out a cluster of black dots half a 

 mile to leeward under the veil of mist which still hangs 

 over the river, and a look through the glass shows them to 



