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Another step and the bird has vanished, swallowed up by the lake, and the chances are a hundred to one against our discovering the motionless neck and the tiny eye which rises again among the water weeds. This little grebe comes of a splendid line of ancestors, some of which were even more specialised for an aquatic life.
Now it looked as if the loon had gone under the ice to rescue its friend from a dangerous situation, for had not the grebe soon found the air, it must have perished, and persons who witnessed the incident interpreted it in this way. It is in such cases that we are so apt to read our human motives and emotions into the acts of the lower animals.
All our northern divers must be more or less acquainted with ice, and must know how to break it. The grebe itself could doubtless have broken the ice had it desired to. The birds and the beasts often show much intelligence, or what looks like intelligence, but, as Hamerton says, "the moment we think of them as human, we are lost." A farmer had a yearling that sucked the cows.
"Indeed I will," she said, impulsively, her blue eyes soft with gratitude. "Very well," observed Sir Peter Grebe, swallowing his indignation and waddling off towards the door; "I shall resign my position on this committee yes, I will, I tell you!" as the King of Finland laid a fatherly hand on Sir Peter's sleeve "I'll not be made responsible for this damn "
A few ice-floes drifted by us, occasionally peopled, as tourists throng a pleasure yacht, by penguins, and also by dusky seals, lying flat upon the white surfaces like enormous leeches. Above this strange flotilla we traced the incessant flight of petrels, pigeons, black puffins, divers, grebe, sterns, cormorants, and the sooty-black albatross of the high latitudes.
It was along this particular highway that the young Earl drove on a certain evening at Christmastide some twenty years before the end of the last century, to attend a ball at Chene Manor, the home of Barbara, and her parents Sir John and Lady Grebe.
Coots and moorhens dived and hid in the reeds. The lesser grebe sank at the sound of the paddle like a stone. A strong northern diver raised a wave as he hurried away under the water, his course marked by the undulation above him. Sedge-birds chirped in the willows; black-headed buntings sat on the trees, and watched him without fear.
Sir Peter Grebe arrived first, all covered with orders and decorations, and greeted us affectionately, calling the Countess the "sweetest lass in France," and me his undutiful Yankee cousin who had landed feet foremost at the expense of the British Empire. The King of Finland, the Crown-Prince, and Baron de Becasse arrived together, a composite mass of medals, sashes, and academy palms.
And, as I have said, had it not been for the presence in that audience of two American reporters nobody would have known what all the world now knows nobody would have read of the marvellous feats of bareback riding indulged in by the King of Finland nobody would have read how Sir Peter Grebe steered his mount safely past the footlights only to come to grief over the prompter's box.
Plumed Egret MESOPHOYX PLUMIFERA. White Egret HERODIAS TIMORIENSIS. White-fronted Heron NOTOPHOYX NOVAE-HOLLANDIAE. Reef Heron DEMIEGRETTA SACRA. Little Mangrove Bittem BUTORIDES STAGNATILIS. Yellow-necked Mangrove Bittem DUPETOR GOULDI. Lesser Frigate Bird FREGATA ARIEL Pelican PELICANUS CONSPICILLATUS. Black-throated Grebe PODICIPES NOVAE-HOLLANDIAE.
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