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Phil and I always have had a hunt after the corncrakes since we read that; but we don't get taken before the magistrates for it." The lads now returned towards their play-field to let the kite down, for it was growing towards tea-time; but they walked along, very slowly, for they were hot and tired with their exertions.
Corncrakes, quails, nightingales, and woodcocks were calling, crickets and grasshoppers were chirruping. There was a light mist over the grass, and clouds were scurrying straight ahead across the sky near the moon. Nature was awake, as though afraid of missing the best moments of her life. I walked along a narrow path at the very edge of a railway embankment.
The choristers sing, the babies cry, the corncrakes call, the lark carols. . . . Then they make a stand and sprinkle the herd with holy water. . . . They go on again, and then kneeling pray for rain. Then lunch and talk. . . . "And that's nice too . . ." thought the deacon. Kirilin and Atchmianov climbed up the mountain by the path.
The sun was blazing; the orioles called to each other in the green thicket; corncrakes chattered close to the path; blue butterflies fluttered in crowds about the white, and red flowers of the low-growing clover; in the perfectly still grass bees hung, as though asleep, languidly buzzing.
Vladimir Sergeitch Tabatchin, who is the hero of our story, looked for the last time at the sun and expired. A week passed.... Birds and corncrakes hovered, whistling, over a newly-made grave. The sun was shining. A young widow, bathed in tears, was standing by, and in her grief sopping her whole handkerchief.... MOSCOW, September 21, 1886. ... It is not much fun to be a great writer.
Very naturally in summer people do not see much but hay and wheat. It was noticed on the farms about the Chace in the springs of 1878 and 1879 that the corncrakes, which had formerly been so numerous and proclaimed their presence so loudly, were scarcely heard at all.
At every turn I came on multitudes of rabbits feeding on the roadside, or on even shyer creatures corncrakes, squirrels and snipe close to villages where no one was awake. Then the sun rose, and I could see lines of smoke beginning to go up from farm-houses under the hills, and sometimes a sleepy, half-dressed girl looked out of the door of a cottage when my feet echoed on the road.
Even gentle female saints can hurl an imprecation too. St. Laisrech, for instance, condemned the lands of those who refused her tribute, to nettles, elder shrub, and corncrakes! It is pretty plain that the compilers of the lives had some prerogatives, claims or rights to uphold hence this frequent insistence on the evil of resisting the Saint and presumably his successors.
Then from the field beyond the wood I could hear the corncrakes sawing away in the yet unmown grass, and there were a great many wood-doves uttering their soft laments. I have always loved the things of nature; but on this evening they had less power than usual to soothe me.
Hence it will cause him no surprise that there should be geese and frigate-birds with webbed feet, living on the dry land and rarely alighting on the water, that there should be long-toed corncrakes, living in meadows instead of in swamps; that there should be woodpeckers where hardly a tree grows; that there should be diving thrushes and diving Hymenoptera, and petrels with the habits of auks.
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