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Then there was all the mysterious life of the streams; the grey-backed fishes that threaded the dim waters, the eels whose presence was betrayed by a slight quivering of the water-plants, the young fry, which dispersed like blackish sand at the slightest sound, the long-legged flies and the water-beetles that ruffled into circling silvery ripples the stagnant surface of the pools; all that silent teeming life which drew them to the water and impelled them to dabble and stand in it, so that they might feel those millions of existences ever and ever gliding past their limbs.
But, in spite of the cold, there was a feeling of spring in the air. The great grey-backed crows were getting scarce, and the short-eared owls, which, a couple of months before, could be flushed from the tufts in the fen, to fly off looking like chubby hawks, were gone, and the flights of ducks and peewits had broken up.
At last a thundering old grey-backed fellow went away before the whole field, making for the steep declivities that lead into the downs, and though the brow of the hill was covered with foot-people who holloa'd and shouted enough to turn a lion, he would make his point, and only altering his course so as to avoid running right among the mob, he gained the summit of the hill and disappeared.
But if they had, and the reader was a green one, he would just about begin to know the ropes and find his sea legs by the time that our Victoria had run her southing down to within another day's sail of the foul-weather zone in the roaring forties round the Horn, which seamen call 'Old Stiff. Sails are shifted again, and the best new suit is bent; for the coming gales have a clear sweep from the Antarctic to the stormiest coast of all America, and the enormous, grey-backed Cape Horners are the biggest seas in the world.
A farm in spring is all birth-young things coming out of bud and shell, and human beings watching over the process with faint excitement feeding and tending what has been born. So still the young man sat, that a mother-goose, with stately cross-footed waddle, brought her six yellow-necked grey-backed goslings to strop their little beaks against the grass blades at his feet. Now and again Mrs.
The head is grey and the remainder of the upper plumage brownish yellow. The eyebrow is white, as are the chin, throat, and upper breast: the remainder of the lower plumage is bright yellow. Suya atrigularis. The black-throated hill-warbler. The upper plumage is olive brown, darkest on the head. The chin, throat, breast, and upper abdomen are black. Lanius tephronotus. The grey-backed shrike.
In consequence they are seldom observed at hill stations. It is true that the grey-backed shrike does occur as high as 9000 feet, but this species, being confined mainly to the inner ranges, does not occur at most hill stations. Its head is grey except for a broad black band running through the eye. The wings and tail are black and white. The back is chestnut red and the rump white.
The tale is even told of cootie fights during long, rainy winter evenings which must be spent indoors. The harborers of the contestants simply reached under their shirts, drew forth a doughty grey-backed warrior, placed him on a child's slate which was used as an arena, and the fight was on. A camp named Lousy Level is said to have made a specialty of this sort of battle.
By this time the sun was driving broad golden spokes through the lower branches of the mango-trees; the parakeets and doves were coming home in their hundreds; the chattering, grey-backed Seven Sisters, talking over the day's adventures, walked back and forth in twos and threes almost under the feet of the travellers; and shufflings and scufflings in the branches showed that the bats were ready to go out on the night-picket.
And she became very frightened that, some day, she might make Andrew a hothouse plant, too. She looked at the thin, grey-backed book again and more light came to her. She flung herself on the ground, her face on the soft grass. The baby, looking at her wonderingly, crawled towards her, and snuggled up to her, his wet little hands on her neck.
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