Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/51

Rh northward summer migrations but also the varieties peculiar to the south had, for some unknown reason, mingled and joined in the long aerial trek.

As we observed them from our shelter, the sun was already over the horizon and the well-known nervous unrest before flight was beginning to manifest itself among the birds. The geese scattered along the shoal began to break up into groups, with the old and more experienced males emerging as leaders, while the others calmly waddled into their places along the forming sides of the V's or quarrelled raucously over the best positions in the formation, that is, those nearest the ends of the lines where it is easier to fly. The birds raised their heads and stretched their long necks toward the glowing face of the golden sun, as they prepared to start. The short, bass notes of the leaders and the querulous voices of the others filled the air, but it was not from among the chattering geese that the signal for departure came. It was the ducks that first rose with their more strident tones and, with the hurrying splash of wings on the water followed by the more measured cadence, invited their fellow-wayfarers to continue their journey north, whither their instinct, that unfailing heritage of past æons, unerringly guided them.

Next the swans moved their great majestic wings, cut the water with their plumed breasts and rose in widening circles higher and higher, until they seemed to be almost motionless, poised beneath broken drifts of clouds, which, in their feathery whiteness, seemed themselves like unto great moving birds, shining in the sun. But when they had taken sufficient elevation, they headed north, an undulating, vibrant grey stream flowing off toward Arctic space. In a few moments the geese rose with their dull trumpeting and noisy splashing of wings and, dressing