"Why, I ain't see' a pelikin sence I use' to flatboat down to Orleans--f'om Honey Islan' an' th' 'Azoo City. 'Pelikin in the wildeh-_ness_,' says the holy book, but they 'can't stan' the wildeh-_ness_!' They plumb gone!--vamoost!--down to the Gulf!--what few ain't been shot!" He grew indignant. "An' whahfo' shot? Faw noth'n'! Jeemany-crackies! gentle-_men_, it makes my blood bile an' my bile go sour! Ain't no bounty on pelikins. Dead pelikins ain't useful--naw awnamental--naw instructive, an' much less they don't tas'e good. No, suh, they jess shot in pyo' devil-_ment_ by awngawdly damn fools--same as them on this boat all day 'istiddy a-poppin' they pistols at ev'y live thing they see'--fo' no damn' reason in the heab'ms above aw the earth beneath aw the watehs undeh the earth--Lawd! it mighty nigh makes me swah! An' I feel the heab'mly call--seein' as that-ah tub-shape' Methodis' bishop _h-ain't_ feel it--fo' to tell you, commodo', you-all hadn't ought allowed that hell-fi'ud nonsense on Gawd's holy day." Even to his grandfather's response Hugh paid no visible attention. The eastern sky had become such a picture that down forward at the break of the deck John Courteney rose eagerly from his chair and looked back and up to be sure that his son was one of its spectators. Yes, Hugh was just casting a like glance to him and now turned to invite the notice of his grandfather. The thunder-clouds had so encompassed the sun that its rays burst through them almost exclusively in one wide crater, crimsoning, bronzing, and gilding their vaporous and ever-changing walls. Thence they spread earthward, heavenward, leaving remoter masses to writhe darkly on each other and themselves, in and out, in and in, cloaking this hill in blue shadow, bathing that one in green light, while from a watery fastness somewhere hid in the depth of the forested swamp under the hills, some long-lost bend of the Mississippi or cut-off of the Yazoo, rose into the flood of beams an innumerable immaculate swarm of giant cranes. Half were white as silver, half were black as jet, and from moment to moment each jet magically turned to silver, each silver to jet, as on slowly pulsing wings they wove a labyrinthian way through their own multitude with never a clash of pinion on pinion, up, down, athwart and around, up, down, and around again, now raven black across the sun and now silver and snow against the cloud. An awed voice broke the stillness and old Joy stood a modest step back from Hugh's side with rapt gaze on hill and sky. XXXIII TWINS AND TEXAS TENDER "Sign f'om de Lawd!" droned the old woman. "It's de souls o' de saints in de tribilatioms o' de worl'!" But explanation was poor tribute to such beauty. Hugh glanced away to his father, then around to the commodore, up to Watson, and back again upon the spectacle. In a tone of remote allusion the grandfather spoke: "One wants a choice partnership for a sight like that."