"The rest of our journey through the grain fields of Sikkim was uneventful. The only thing that is worth remembering was the trapping of peacocks by men in the forests. These birds come to the hot southern marshes in quest of food and warmth when the snakes and other creatures whom they eat go into winter quarters in the north.
"Peacocks and tigers admire one another. The former like to look at the tiger's skin and he enjoys the beauty of their plumes. Sometimes at the water hole a tiger will stand gazing at the plumes of a peacock on a bough, and the peacock will crane his neck to feast his eyes on the beauty of the striped skin. Now comes man, the eternal aggressor, on the scene. For instance, a man one day brought a piece of cloth painted exactly like a tiger's skin, so that no bird could tell by looking at it that it was not the striped one himself. Then he set a noose on a branch of a tree nearby, and slunk away. I could tell by the odour of the painted cloth that it was not a tiger, but peacocks have no sense of smell worth speaking of. They are victims of their own eyes. So in a few hours a pair of peacocks came and began to gaze at the make-believe tiger from a tree-top, coming lower and lower. They deceived themselves into the belief that the tiger was asleep. Emboldened by that illusion, they came very close and stood on the branch near the trap. It did not take them long to walk into it, but how they both stepped into a single trap I cannot make out. No sooner were they caught than they shrieked in despair. Then appeared the trapper, and played another trick on them. He threw up two large black canvas caps and lassooed them on each peacock's head, hiding the poor birds' eyes. Once the eyes are darkened, a bird never resists much. The man now tied their feet so that they could not walk; then he set one on each end of his bamboo pole. Slowly he lifted it by the middle, put it on his shoulder and walked off, the long tails of the peacocks streaming down like cataracts of rainbow before and behind him.
"There ends my Odyssey. The next day I said goodbye to the swifts. They went further south, and I was glad to get home, a wiser and a sadder bird. Now," demanded Gay-Neck, "tell me this. Why is there so much killing and inflicting of pain by birds and beasts on one another? I don't think all of you men hurt each other. Do you? But birds and beasts do. All that makes me so sad."
PART II
CHAPTER I
GAY-NECK'S TRAINING FOR WAR
fter we returned to town the air was filled with the rumours of a coming war somewhere in Europe. Now that winter was at hand, I decided to give Gay-Neck such training as would be necessary in case he was asked to be a carrier for the British war department. Since he was used to the climate of the northeastern Himalayas, he would be an invaluable messenger for the army in any European country. Even now, with the aid of wireless telegraph and radio, no army can dispense with the help of carrier pigeons. All that will become clear to you as the present story unfolds itself.
In training carriers for war work, I followed a plan of my own which Ghond approved. By the way, the old fellow came all the way to town with us. He stayed in our house two or three days, then decided to leave, saying: "The city is unbearable. I never loved any city, but this one frightens me with its electric tramway and how-aghari (wind chariot)—the automobile. If I do not shake the dust of this town off my feet very soon, I shall be nothing better than a coward. A tiger in the jungle does not frighten me, but I cannot say the same of an automobile. One crossing of a modern city street imperils more lives in a minute than a day in the most dangerous forests. Farewell! I go where the woods wear stillness for a dress, the air is free of odours and dust, and the sky, a hollowed turquoise, is not cross-cut and pierced with poles and telegraph wires. Instead of factory whistles I shall hear the song of birds; and in the place of thieves and gunmen I shall have innocent tigers and panthers face to face. Farewell!"