"Now began my real Odyssey. I went northwards to the eagle's nest, and stopped at the Lamasery where a holy man had blessed me on an earlier occasion. There I re-visited Mr. and Mrs. Swift, my old friends. Moving further north I went past Singalele at last and reached the eyrie of the eagles who had flown away. So I made myself comfortable there, but not too happy, for the eagles leave all kinds of refuse in their nests, and I am afraid they swarm with vermin. Though I spent my day in the eagle's nest, I decided to spend the night in a tree, free from horrid insects. After a couple of days, my going in and out of the eyrie gave me great prestige among other birds. They feared me, perhaps because they took me for a sort of eagle. Even the hawks began to give me a wide berth. That gave me all the confidence that I needed, so early one morning, seeing a white wedge of birds coming south, flying very high, I joined them. They did not mind my joining them, they were wild geese going towards Ceylon and beyond, in the quest of a sunny ocean. "Those geese, after two hours' flight, as the day became warmer, descended onto a rapid mountain stream. Unlike the eagles, they rarely looked downwards, but watched the horizon lines. They spied a little ribbon of whitish blue far off against the sky, and flew in a slowly declining straight line till it seemed as if the earth were rising to meet us, and soon all plunged into the silver stream, for now, the waters looked more silvery than blue. They floated on the water, but as I knew that I was not web-footed, I sat on a tree and watched their antics. You know how flat and ugly the bills of geese are, but now I saw the reason for it. They used them like pincers on things such as shells that grew on the side of the banks. Every now and then a goose would put his bill on a plant or a shell, then wring it out of position as a butcher would wring a duck's neck. After that it would devour its victim wholesale, crushing it in its powerful throat, but ere it passed very far down its size dwindled to nothing. I saw one fellow do worse than that. He found a fish--as lean as a water snake--in a hole under the bank; he began to pull it. The more he pulled the thinner and longer it got. Slowly, after a terrific tug of war, the poor fellow was dragged from his hole. Then the goose hopped up the shore and flung it on the ground. His bill had crushed the part it had held onto, nearly into pulp, so no wonder his wriggling victim was already dead. Then from nowhere walked up to him another goose. (By the way, are not geese the most ungainly birds when they are not flying or swimming? On the water they resemble dreams floating on pools of sleep, but on land they hobble like cripples on crutches!) By now the two geese were quarrelling. They pulled one another's feathers, they slapped with their wings, they kicked each other with their feet every time they hopped up above the ground. While they were thus engaged, oblivious