West Wind Drift

by George Barr McCutcheon

The weeks wore on and the fields of grain were harvested. The yield was not a heavy one, but it was sufficient to justify the rather hap-hazard experiments. The fifty-odd acres of wheat produced a little over a thousand bushels. The twenty-acre oat-field had averaged forty bushels. A few acres of barley, sown broadcast in the calcareous loam along the coast, amounted to nothing.

Primitive means for grinding the grain had been devised. This first crop was being laboriously crushed between roughly made mill-stones, but before another harvest came along, a mill would be in operation on the banks of Leap Frog River.

The exploration of the island had long since been completed. In certain parts of the dense forest covering the western section there were magnificent specimens of the Norfolk Island pine. Fruits of the citrous family were found in abundance; wild cherries, wild grapes, figs, and an apple of amazing proportions and exceeding sweetness. Pigeons in great numbers were found, a fact that puzzled Professor Knapendyke not a little.

He finally arrived at an astonishing conclusion. He connected the presence of these birds with the remark-able exodus of wild pigeons from their haunts in the United States in the eighties. Millions of pigeons at that time took their annual flight southward from Michigan, Indiana and other states in that region, and were never seen again. What became of this prodigious cloud of birds still remains a mystery. Knapendyke now advanced the theory that in skirting the Gulf of Mexico on their way to the winter roosts in Central America they were caught by a hurricane and blown out to sea. By various stages the bewildered survivors of the gale made their way down the east coast of South America, only to be caught up again by another storm that carried them out into the Atlantic. A few reached this island, hundreds of miles from the mainland, and here they remained to propagate. At any rate, the naturalist was preparing to put his impressions and deductions into the form of a paper which he intended to submit to the National Geographic Magazine as soon as he returned to the United States.

The more practical Mr. Fitts decided to start a squab farm.

A few of the giant iguanas were seen, and many smaller ones. The meat of the iguana is a great delicacy. There were no beasts of prey, no herbaceous animals.

Lookouts on Top o' the Morning Peak reported the presence of monstrous birds at rare intervals. Where they came from and whither they went no one could tell. There were unscalable cliffs and crags at the western end of the island, and it is possible that they had their nests among them.

Lieutenant Platt described the first of these huge birds as being at least thirty feet from tip to tip. It flew low above the top of Split Mountain and disappeared beyond the hills to the west. When first descried by one of the lookouts, this bird was far out over the ocean, approaching the island from the east. As it soared over the heads of the men, several hundred feet above them, its wings full spread, it was more like a small monoplane than a bird. In colour it was a dirty yellow, with a black belly and head. Before any one could procure a gun from the hut it was out of range, flying at an incredible speed. A few days later another was seen, coming from the same direction. It was flying much higher, and a few futile shots were fired at it. Then, after a week or ten days without a single one of the monsters being seen, five of them appeared in the west and flew eastward over the island and out to sea.

“What was the name of that passenger-carrying bird they were always talking about in the 'Arabian Nights'?” inquired Platt.

“You mean the roc,” replied Knapendyke. “If it ever really existed outside of the fairy tales, it is now extinct. The nearest thing to it in size is the condor, I suppose.”