220 Next to the Ground 



ground over thirty years after the last wing 

 had fluttered away, Joe could realize in large 

 measure all his father told him. The first 

 pigeons, said the Major, came always early in 

 October, flying in, in wide wavering lines, two 

 or three birds deep, exactly as the feeble rem- 

 nant of them now flew over each autumn. 

 Those first birds also flew over or away. 

 They were here to-day, to-morrow even, and 

 gone the day after. Everybody knew, though, 

 that they. were harbingers of the flocks — sent, 

 it might be, to spy out the land. 



The flocks came ten days later. They 

 flew in clouds, darkening the whole heavens 

 for hours at a time, and filling the world with 

 the rushing noise of wings. A single flock 

 was estimated to be five miles broad, forty 

 miles long, and a mile deep from top to bot- 

 tom.* Between flocks there was a little clear 

 space. The sky showed through it as through 

 a rift in thick clouds. The rifts proved that 

 in flight, the pigeons kept always to the broad 

 wavering formation. Though now and then 

 a line bellied or sank, the head of one flock 

 never stretched over into the tail of the flock 

 ahead. They did not sail as do birds of prey 

 — hawks, vultures, eagles — nor flap their 

 wings like wild fowl. Instead, their wings 

 had a quick convulsive motion, half flutter, 

 * Wilson's estimate. 



