The big handsome birds (there were thirteen of them) were flying in a triangle, with slow sharp flaps of their hollow wings; with their heads and legs stretched rigidly out, and their breasts stiffly pressed forward, they pushed on persistently and so swiftly that the air whistled about them. It was marvellous at such a height, so remote from all things living, to see such passionate, strenuous life, such unflinching will, untiringly cleaving their triumphant way through space. The cranes now and then called to one another, the foremost to the hindmost; and there was a certain pride, dignity, and invincible faith in these loud cries, this converse in the clouds. ‘We shall get there, be sure, hard though it be,’ they seemed to say, cheering one another on. And then the thought came to me that men, such as these birds--in Russia--nay, in the whole world, are few. ‘We are flying towards Russia now,’ observed Alice. I noticed now, not for the first time, that she almost always knew what I was thinking of. ‘Would you like to go back?’ ‘Let us go back ... or no! I have been in Paris; take me to Petersburg.’ ‘Now?’ ‘At once.... Only wrap my head in your veil, or it will go ill with me.’ Alice raised her hand ... but before the mist enfolded me, I had time to feel on my lips the contact of that soft, dull sting.... XXII ‘Li-i-isten!’ sounded in my ears a long drawn out cry. ‘Li-i-isten!’ was echoed back with a sort of desperation in the distance. ‘Li-i-isten!’ died away somewhere far, far away. I started. A tall golden spire flashed on my eyes; I recognised the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul.