Loo said she would be as quiet as a mouse.
“We shall want some tea presently. I say!” said Mark, “we’ve forgotten Charlie!”
He ran up on the cliff, but it was too late; Charlie had been and waved his cap three times, in token that all was not quite right at home. Mark looked at the sun-dial; it was nearly five. They had not had dinner till later than usual, and then Loo’s explanation and cross-examination had filled up the time. Still as Loo told them she was certain every one was quite well at home, they did not trouble about having missed Charlie. Mark wished to go shooting again round Serendib, and they started, leaving the slave in charge of the hut to cook their supper.
Mark had the matchlock, and Bevis poled the raft gently round Serendib, but the water-fowl seemed to have become more cautious, as they did not see any. Bevis poled along till they came to a little inlet, where they stopped, with blue gum branches concealing them on either hand. Mark knelt where he could see both ways along the shore; Bevis sat back under the willows with Pan beside him.
They were so quiet that presently a black-headed reed-bunting came and looked down at them from a willow bough. Moths fluttered among the tops of the branches, the wind was so light that they flew whither they listed, instead of being borne out over the water. The brown tips of a few tall reeds moved slightly as the air came softly; they did not bow nor bend; they did but just sway, yielding assent.
Every now and then there was a rush overhead as five or six starlings passed swiftly, straight as arrows, for the firs at the head of Fir-Tree Gulf. These parties succeeding each other were perhaps separate families gathering together into a tribe at the roosting-trees. Over the distant firs a thin cloud like a black bar in the sky spread itself out, and then descended funnel-shaped into the firs. The cloud was formed of starlings, thousands of them, rising up from the trees and settling again. One bird as a mere speck would have been invisible; these legions darkened the air there like smoke.
But just beyond the raft the swallows glided, dipping their breasts and sipping as they dipped; the touch and friction of the water perceptibly checked their flight. They wheeled round and several times approached the surface, till having at last the exact balance and the exact angle they skimmed the water, leaving no more mark than a midge.
Bevis watched them, and as he watched his senses gradually became more acute, till he could distinctly hear the faint far off sound of the waterfall at Sweet River. It rose and fell, faint and afar; the flutter of a moth’s wings against the greyish willow leaves overbore and silenced it. As he listened and watched the swallows he thought, or rather felt—for he did not think from step to step upwards to a conclusion—he felt that all the power of a bird’s wing is in its tip.
It was with the slender-pointed and elastic tip, the flexible and finely divided feather point that the bird flew. An artist has a cumbrous easel, a heavy framework, a solid palette which has a distinct weight, but he paints with a tiny point of camel’s hair. With a camel’s hair tip the swallow sweeps the sky.
That part of the wing near the body, which is thick, rigid, and contains the bones, is the easel and framework; it is the shaft through which the driving force flows, and in floating it forms a part of the plane or surface, but it does not influence the air. The touch of the wing is in its tip. There where the feathers fine down to extreme tenuity, so that if held up the light comes through the filaments, they seem to feel the air and to curl over on it as the end of a flag on a mast curls over on itself. So the tail of a fish—his one wing—curls over at the extreme edge of its upper and lower corners, and as it unfolds presses back the water. The swallow, pure artist of flight, feels the air with his wing-tips as with fingers, and lightly fanning glides.