FROM ACROSS THE SEAS. 187 
might say; all coloured identically with that 
first bird, now a speck, ‘hull down,’ if I may 
so put it, on the watery horizon—pigeons, 
wood-pigeons, or ring-doves, if you care for 
correctness. I don’t know where, precisely, 
they had come from, where was their home. 
Those silent, locked lands of northern Europe 
keep their secrets too well for me to be sure 
of that. 
The first bird of the flock was very big for 
a wood-pigeon, and that may, or may not, 
have been why he was the vanguard of that 
feathered army. He flew with an absolutely 
unaltering, regular, quick beat of his strong 
wings, like a machine, reeling off his forty 
miles an hour with a steady persistency. You 
see, he knew that those endless, jade-green, 
snarling, following waters must continue to 
slide beneath him for many hours; knew, too, 
that if fatigue seized him in the middle—if the 
wind changed and blew in his face—there 
could be no help; he must drown. Yet he 
flung the shore into the seascape behind him 
and travelled hard, and goodness knows how 
many miles he had already come! He knew, 
of course, where he was going; but, being 
a bird, he quite forgot to explain by what 
miracle he found his trackless way. 
Then night added itself to the desolation, 
