More searchings followed without results, until the sun was westering well down the sky. Five miles lay between us and clean clothes and a bath. Reluctantly we left the marsh, with our bittern’s nest still unfound. As we approached the village, we saw showing over the meadows the edge of a continuation of the marsh, and decided that we had time for just one more exploring trip. Here we found the worst going of the day. In front of us were innumerable dry cat-tail stalks and hollow reed-stems, while the mud was deeper and the mosquitoes were fiercer than in the main swamp.
At last the Banker and the Architect sat down exhausted under a tree, while the Artist and myself planned to cross to a fringe of woods on the farther side before giving up. In the middle of the marsh we separated, and before long I found myself on the trail of another marsh hawk’s nest. It was evidently close at hand, for both the birds swooped down and circled around my head, calling frantically all the time. Look as I would, however, I could find no trace of the nest. We reached the woods without finding anything and came back together. When we were within two hundred yards of where the other two were luxuriously waiting for us in the shade, from under my very feet flapped a monstrous bird nearly three feet high. It was the bittern. I was so close that I could see the yellow bill, and the glossy black on the sides of the neck and tips of the wings, and the different shades of brown on back, head, and wings. As it sprang up, it gave a hoarse cry and flapped off with labored strokes of its broad wings. Right before me was a flat platform of reeds about a foot in diameter, well packed down and raised about five inches from the water. On this platform were a shred or so of down and four eggs of a dull coffee color. In a moment the Banker and the Architect were splashing and crackling through the mud and reeds, and we spent the last quarter-hour of our trip in admiring and photographing the much-desired nest.
So ended our visit to Wolf Island Marsh with a list of fifty-one birds seen and heard, and seven nests found, photographed, and enjoyed.
[XI]
THE SEVEN SLEEPERS
A thousand and a thousand years ago, seven saints hid from heathen persecutors among the cold mountains which circle Ephesus. The multitude who cried, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians!” are drifting dust, and the vast city itself but a mass of half-buried ruins. Yet somewhere in a lonely cave sleep those seven holy men, unvexed by sorrow, untouched by time, until Christ comes again. So runs the legend.
It is a far cry to Ephesus, and whether the Seven still sleep there, who may say? Yet here and now seven other Sleepers live with us, who slumber through our winters, with hunger and cold and danger but a dream. Their names I once rhymed for some children of my acquaintance. As I am credibly advised that the progress of a camel through the eye of a needle is an easy process compared to having a poem printed by the Atlantic Press, I hasten to include in this chapter the following exquisite bit of free verse (I call it free because I don’t get anything extra for it).
The Bat and the Bear, they never care
What winter winds may blow;