Boys -- Juvenile fiction; Fantasy literature; Nature -- Juvenile fiction; Self-reliance -- Juvenile fiction
They sat down on a stone to watch the birds, and whenever one flying
lower than the others came pretty near them Martin gazed delightedly
at it, and wished it would come still nearer so that he might see it
better. Then the woman stood up on the stone, and, gazing skywards
and throwing up her arms, she uttered a long call, and the birds
began to come lower and lower down, still sweeping round in wide
circles, and by and by one came quite down and pitched on a stone a
few yards from them. Then another came and lighted on another stone,
then another, and others followed, until they were all round him in
scores, sitting on the rocks, great brown birds with black bars on
their wings and tails, and buff-coloured breasts with rust-red spots
and stripes. It was a wonderful sight, those eagle-like hawks, with
their blue hooked beaks and deep-set dark piercing eyes, sitting in
numbers on the rocks, and others and still others dropping down from
the sky to increase the gathering.
Then the woman sat down by Martin's side, and after a while one of
the hawks spread his great wings and rose up into the air to resume
his flight. After an interval of a minute or so another rose, then
another, but it was an hour before they were all gone.
"O the dear birds--they are all gone!" cried Martin. "Mother, where
are they going?"
She told him of a far-away land in the south, from which, when
autumn comes, the birds migrate north to a warmer country hundreds
of leagues away, and that birds of all kinds were now travelling
north, and would be travelling through the sky above them for many
days to come.
Martin looked up at the sky, and said he could see no birds now that
the buzzards were all gone.
"I can see them," she returned, looking up and glancing about the sky.
"O mother, I wish I could see them!" he cried. "Why can't I see them
when you can?"
"Because your eyes are not like mine. Look, can you see this?" and
she held up a small stone phial which she took from her bosom.
He took it in his hand and unstopped and smelt at it. "Is it honey?
Can I taste it?" he asked.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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