"Why does beauty lie so close to death? Hardly had the ineffable glory of that supernal music overhead seized my soul when balls of fire fell about us like a torrential rain. Men fell and succumbed like rats in flooded holes. The Rasseldar, who was bleeding and red, wrote hastily on a piece of paper, tied it to my feet and uncaged me. I knew by the look in his eyes that he was in dire distress and wanted Ghond to bring him succour.
"Of course you know, my master, I flew up; but what I beheld almost froze my wings. The air above the trenches was one sheet of flying fire. How to rise above it was my problem. I used my tail rudder, and steered my flight in every direction. But no matter which way I rose, above me ran a million shuttles of flame, weaving the garment of red destruction on the loom of life. But I had to rise, I, Gay-Neck, the son of my father. And soon I struck a pocket of air which was full of a current that sucked and whirled me up as if my wing were broken and I were as light as a leaf. It turned me up and down and up again till I had torn my way through the fabric of fire that kept on weaving itself with ever-increasing rapidity. But I had no eye for anything now. 'To Ghond, to Ghond,' I kept saying to myself. Every time I said that, it dug like a fresh goad into my spirit and made me put forth my greatest effort. Now that I had risen very high I made my observations and flew westward. Just then a shot pierced and broke my rudder. Half of my tail was burnt and torn away from me. And you know that made me furious! My tail is my point of honour. I can't bear it to be touched, let alone shot at. Well, I flew safely home, but just about the moment I was getting ready to go down, two eagles started a fight above me. I had not heard their trumpeting nor seen their faces. Had they killed each other I would not have minded, but they let loose a hurricane of flames after me. The more they fought the more fire fell from their beaks. I dived and ducked as well as I could. If only they had had some trees there. Of course there had been trees, but most of them had been shot and mutilated so that they stuck out like stumps, with no shade-giving gracious foliage, nor any prodigious boughs. So I had to zig-zag my way round and about those dilapidated spikes like a man fleeing from elephants in the jungle. At last I reached home and perched on Ghond's wrist. He cut the thread and took the message with me to the Commander-in-Chief, who looked like a ripe cherry and exuded a pleasant odour of soap. Probably, unlike most soldiers, he bathed and soaped himself clean three or four times a day. After he had read what was scribbled on that paper by the Rasseldar, he patted me on the head and grunted like a happy ox."
CHAPTER V
SECOND ADVENTURE
he next time we were taken to the front was after the Rasseldar recovered from his slight wounds. On this occasion he took both Hira and me. I knew at once that the message we were to carry was so important that two had to be trusted with it so that at least one might succeed.
"It was very cold. I felt as if I were living in a kingdom of ice. It rained all the time. The ground was so foul that every time you stepped on it your feet got caught in mud like quicksand, and your feet felt so cold, as if you had stepped on a corpse. Now we reached a strange place. It was not a trench, but a small village. Around it beat and burst the tides of burning destruction. It was, by the look on the men's faces, a very sacred and important place, for they did not want to give it up though the red tongues of death licked almost every roof, wall and tree of this place. I was very glad to be in an open space. One could see the grey sky low, oh, so very low. And one could see the frost-whited patches of ground where no shell had yet fallen. Even there, in that very heart of pounding and shooting, where houses fell as birds' nests in tempests, rats ran from hole to hole, mice stole cheese, and spiders spun webs to catch flies. They went on with the business of their life as if the slaughtering of men by their brothers were as negligible as the clouds that covered the sky.
"After a while the booming stopped. And it looked as if the village, that is what was left of it, were safe from attack. It grew darker and darker. The sky lowered so far that I could put my beak into it. The dank cold seized every feather of my body and began to pull it out, as it were. I found it utterly impossible to sit still in our cage. Hira and I hugged each other tight in order to keep warm.
"Again firing broke out. This time from every direction. Our little village was an island surrounded by the enemy. Apparently under cover of the fog that had enwrapped everything, the enemy had cut off our connection from the rear. Then they started shooting the sky-rockets. It was dark and clammy like a Himalayan night though it was hardly past noon. I wondered how men knew it was anything but night. Men after all know less than birds.