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His voice, shrill and piping, ever and again dropped plummet-like into a hoarse and rattling bass, and, just as one became accustomed to it, soaring upward into the thin treble alternate cricket chirpings and bullfrog croakings, as it were. "So a girl was chosen for me," he was saying. "For my father, who was Kask-ta-ka, the Otter, was angered because I looked not with a needful eye upon women.
I crumble the bread that remains from my breakfast to attract them by an ampler feast. Their chirpings increase, they bend down their heads, the boldest approach upon the wing, but without daring to alight. Come, come, my sparrows are the victims of one of the foolish panics which make the funds fall at the Bourse! It is plain that birds are not more reasonable than men!
They began an immediate investigation, and, when they caught sight of a boy scrambling down the side of the rocks with a basket strapped to his back, from which came a number of familiar squeak-like chirpings, they had no trouble in understanding matters. The style in which they went for that same boy was a sight to behold.
For if, by ill chance, and when time pressed, your House fell, have I not seen five neighborly Helpers appear next day; and swashing to and fro, with animated, loud, long-drawn chirpings, and activity almost super-hirundine, complete it again before nightfall?
But presently as I forced a way through these leafy tangles, the birds, awaking, began to fill the dim world with blithe chirpings that grew and grew to a sweet clamour, ever swelling until the dark woods thrilled with gladsome music and I, beholding the first beam of sun, felt heartened thereby 'spite my lack of sleep and the gnawing of hunger's sharp fangs, and hastened with blither steps.
"Swift bright wings flitted in and out And happy chirpings were all about." For days the wood had resounded with the shrill little cries of swallow babies, who alighted on the low trees on the border while their busy parents skimmed over the bay, or the marshy shore, and every few minutes brought food to their clamorous offspring.
No one came to disturb them, and only the songs and chirpings of birds and the sleepy sigh of the faint breeze in the boughs broke the silence. Green and blue was that fairyland, warm with the sun and redolent of the sea and the sappy fragrance of sun-bathed foliage.
The sunlight flickered in here and there, and shadowy leaves moved noiselessly up and down the whitewashed wall. Only the occasional song of a bird was wanting to reproduce the former hour, but at this later season the birds seem content with calls and chirpings, and in the July heat they were almost as silent as we were. But how weak and fanciful my June day-dream now seemed.
But there seemed no other sound. There was no other motion. There was absolute stillness all around. But when Calhoun switched on the outside microphones a faint, sweet melange of high-pitched chirpings came from tiny creatures hidden under the vegetation of the mountainsides. Calhoun put a blaster in his pocket and stood up.
Even the birds in their nests, awakened by the firelight, join their sleepy chirpings to the chorus. It has something primeval about it, and one almost expects to see Robin Hood or Friar Tuck step out into the firelight. The camp fire carries one back to the days when the red men roamed the woods, sat round their camp fires, listened to the talking leaves, and boasted of their prowess.
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