A VOYAGE IN THE DARK 



marked that one of the aerial voyagers 

 had boarded our craft, while I main- 

 tained there were two, which proved to 

 be the fact ; whereupon I argued that 

 my ears were better than their eyes, but 

 failed to convince them or even myself. 

 I welcomed the bees as old acquaint- 

 ances, who, in the duck-shooting of past 

 years, always used to come aboard and 

 bear us company for awhile, rarely alight- 

 ing, but tacking from stem to stern on a 

 cruise of inspection, till at last, satisfied 

 or disappointed, they went booming out 

 of sight and hearing over marshfuls of 

 blue spikes of pickerel weed and white 

 trinities of arrowhead. I cannot imagine 

 why bees should be attracted to the bar- 

 renness of a boat, unless by a curiosity 

 to explore such strange floating islands, 

 though their dry wood promises neither 

 leaf nor bloom. 



I hear of people every year who for- 

 sake leafage and bloom to search the 

 frozen desolation of the polar north for 

 the Lord knows what, and I cease to 

 wonder at the bees, when men so waste 

 the summers that are given them to en- 

 joy if they will but bide in them. 

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