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Updated: June 18, 2025
Hua paid no attention to him, but loudly ordered his hunters to go to the mountains and bring him some water-birds for his table. "Those birds can be found only by the sea," ventured the priest. "You countermand my orders, do you?" roared the monarch. "I gave no order," protested the venerable man. "Hark you," insisted the king. "My men are going to the mountain.
They bore their prey, the water-birds, and said they had found them inland. Knowing this to be a lie, told by the king's command, the priest said, "These birds came from the sea. You can smell it upon them. Look." And he cut open two or three of their bodies. "Here are little fish and bits of seaweed they have eaten within the hour."
In the warm morning light they gathered or dispersed before the advancing vessel, which some of them almost touched with the plumage of their evergreens; and where none of them were large, some were so small that it would not have been too bold to figure them as a vaster race of water-birds assembling and separating in her course.
Once a great flight of some small water-birds went past me, flying very fast to the westwards. The quick whir of their wings and their musical cry were cheery to my ear. I fancy that they were teal, but I am a wretched zoologist. Now that we humans have become birds we must really learn to know our brethren by sight. "The wind down beneath me whirled and swayed the broad cloud-plain.
They sank like stones in the thick ooze; they were sucked under to their knees, to their waists, to their shoulders, to their mouths; the yielding grasses, the clutching slime, the tangled weed, the bottomless mud, took hold of them; the water-birds shrieked and beat their wings; the hideous clamour of dying men answered them.
Now we began to see the breeding places of the water-birds of which we had heard. There was a confusion of bird calls, sand-hill cranes were everywhere; in some cases with five stick-built nests in a single water-killed tree. A blue heron flopped around as though it had broken a wing, to decoy us from its nest. The snowy white pelican waddled along the banks and mingled with the cormorants.
"Herons and swans and ducks and wild geese, widgeon, all sorts of water-birds nest there. Maybe there used to be other game when they made the song." Most of Sir Walter's domain was fertile valley, dense forest or barren moorland, but there was an area of marsh whose usefulness was not yet clear.
"As to Holy Week, that is another affair; the mania for water-birds gives way to a hankering for the Charlotte Russe. May they, without offence to God, enjoy a Charlotte? There are eggs in it, to be sure, but so whipped and scourged that the dish is almost ascetic; culinary explanations are poured into my ear, the confessional becomes a kitchen, and the priest might be a master-cook.
It was not long after leaving Port Canning ere we were in the midst of the aquatic plants, the adjutants, the herons, the thousand sorts of water-birds, the crocodiles, which here abound.
These big water-birds do not travel as fast as the rock pigeons." I nodded, wishing to save my breath. Then, quivering with excitement, for if I missed the next shot the match appeared to be lost, presently I took the rifle from his hand. Scarcely had I done so when a single goose came over quite as high as the others and travelling "as though the black devil had kicked it," as Retief said.
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