THE BULL-O -THE-MARSHES. 41 
He was big—monstrous in that half-light. 
He was burly. His great rounded wings 
flapped slowly with a gentle ‘frou-frou.’ Yet 
they seemed to float him along. It was as 
if, for all his size, weight had gone from him, 
and he carried a balloon for inside. 
At last the shadowing pinions ceased their 
measured, leisurely beat—they had kept it up 
without intermission for a few hundred miles 
at least—and, extending and bending in the 
shape of a parachute, let him down slowly, 
let him down infinitely gently—his long, 
ungainly legs dropped ready—into the reed 
bank. 
The tall, ranked, and marshalled sedges 
acknowledged receipt of his big, fawn, black- 
slashed body with a dry sound like the 
tearing of satin; the water gave a faint slap 
as his feet took it; the large wings flapped 
two half-strokes by way of backing air, 
and folded. Then—and then—well, he just 
vanished. 
It was rather a weird arrangement in that 
eerie, wet spot, the air heavy with the smell of 
decaying vegetation. One moment he was; 
the next he wasn’t. The reeds would have 
rustled if he had run away. The water was 
too shallow for him to go under. How, then, 
this miracle ? 
SW. d 
