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"How do you feel now?" asked the Bittern, as the Kangaroo presently struggled up and squatted rather feebly on her haunches, looking about in a somewhat dazed way. "I'm better now," said the Kangaroo, "but, dear me, how everything seems to dance up and down!" She shut her eyes, for she felt giddy.
Here they lay down together, full of happiness at their escape, and worn out with fatigue and excitement, they were soon fast asleep. The next day, before the sun rose, the Bittern visited the cave. "Hullo, you precious lazy pair! I've been over there," and it tossed its beak in the direction of the blacks' camp. "They're off northward. Too frightened to stay.
Recall what he did to Ernest Seton-Thompson and to that minister in Stamford, Connecticut. Remember how he crossed swords with Mr. Scully touching the alleged dangerous nature of the ostrich and the early domestication of the peacock. So far as I know, the bittern thing has no voice at all. His real stunt is as follows.
There were no insect noises, no resonant voices of bull-frogs; weird squeaks arose at intervals, the murmuring complaint of water-fowl, guttural quack of duck and bittern a vague stirring everywhere of wild things settling to rest or awaking.
Everything seemed to harmonise into tranquillity; even the mournful call of the bittern was in cadence with the tinkling bells on the necks of the cows, that, pacing slowly one after the other, along an inviting path in the vale below, were repairing to the cottages to be milked.
And they rowed away for Crowland, by many a mere and many an ea; through narrow reaches of clear brown glassy water; between the dark-green alders; between the pale-green reeds; where the coot clanked, and the bittern boomed, and the sedge-bird, not content with its own sweet song, mocked the song of all the birds around; and then out into the broad lagoons, where hung motionless, high overhead, hawk beyond hawk, buzzard beyond buzzard, kite beyond kite, as far as eye could see.
The hoopoe, however, could not even get his cows up on their legs, so faint and weak had they become. "Up, up, up," screamed he, but it was in vain, they remained lying on the sand. That is the way when one has no moderation. And to this day, though they have no flocks now to watch, the bittern cries, "Come, cows, come," and the hoopoe, "Up, up, up." 174 The Owl
The night was full of sounds, but whether earthly; from wildfowl and bittern and curlew, from fox, and badger, and otter; or from the evil spirits of the marsh, I knew not nor cared. For now the long imprisonment and the day's terrible doings, and the little food I had had since we halted on the hill of Brent, all began to get hold of me, and I stumbled on as a man in a bad dream.
The boom of the bittern resounds all day, and above it the rasping scream of the blue heron, as he strikes terror to the hearts of frogdom; while the occasional cries of a lost loon, strayed from its flock in northern migration, fill the swamp with sounds of wailing.
Black Paul answered quietly: "I was getting the men on board," he said, "so as to save time, and I was coming back for you." Bonnet glared at his sailing-master, but he did not swear at him, he was too useful a man, but in his heart he vowed that he would never trust Paul Bittern again, and that as soon as he could he would get rid of him.
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