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Of what use could it have been? The Master was looking far to eastward, now with the naked eye, now sweeping the prospect with binoculars. He was studying the African coast, clearly in sight as a long, whitish line of sand with a whiter collar of foamy surf, fifteen miles away. A few gulls had begun to show strange, small gulls, yellow-beaked and swift.
Over the sand the riders swept, past a slow-plodding elephant lumbering back to the city with a load of fodder, by groups of tethered camels. Hares started up in alarm and bounded away, grey partridges whirred up and yellow-beaked minas flew off chattering indignantly.
The grass shot up in sharp tongues through the even layers of last years' fallen leaves. Little narrow paths ran here and there, from which yellow-beaked blackbirds rose with startled cries, flying close to the earth into the wood as hard as they could go.
Teresina's cheeks flushed with pleasure and her eyes sparkled each time he brought her some dainty from the master's table, and she thanked him in the prettiest way imaginable, so that her voice reminded him of the singing of the yellow-beaked blackbird he kept in a cage at home which was saying much, for the blackbird sang well and sweetly.
Once a chattering squirrel came bravely rustling through the branches to the very edge of the enchanted bower, but he only sat and stared a moment in seeming admiration, then retreated quietly. A yellow-beaked toucan, in a flash of red and black and gold, settled upon a mirrored limb; but it, too, stilled its raucous tongue and flitted away on noiseless pinions as if the Naiads were asleep.
The cries of the caravane, the "knock-kneed" plover of Egypt, yellow-beaked and black-eyed, resounded in the more barren belts. The ravens, here as elsewhere, are a plague: flights of them occupy favourite places, and they prey upon the young lambs, hares, and maimed birds.
It's like being in an aviary," said Barclay. Dermot threw open the wooden shutters. Outside the window was a small balcony. On the roofs and verandahs of the Palace scores of grey-hooded crows were perched, filling the air with discordant sounds. Up in the pale blue sky the wheeling hawks whistled shrilly. Down in the courtyard below yellow-beaked mynas chattered volubly.
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