The+birds+original+short+story

On December the third the wind changed overnight and it was winter. Until then the autumn had been mellow, soft. The leaves had lingered on the trees, golden red, and the hedgerows were still green. The earth was rich where the plough had turned it. Nat Hocken, because of a wartime disability, had a pension and did not work full-time at the farm. He worked three days a week, and they gave him the lighter jobs: hedging, thatching, repairs to the farm buildings. Although he was married, with children, his was a solitary disposition; he liked best to work alone. It pleased him when he was given a bank to build up, or a gate to mend at the far end of the peninsula, where the sea surrounded the farm land on either side. Then, at midday, he would pause and eat the pasty that his wife had baked for him, and sitting on the cliff's edge would watch the birds. Autumn was best for this, better than spring. In spring the birds flew inland, purposeful, intent; they knew where they were bound, the rhythm and ritual of their life brooked no delay. In autumn those that had not migrated overseas but remained to pass the winter were caught up in the same driving urge, but because migration was denied them followed a pattern of their own. Great flocks of them came to the peninsula, restless, uneasy, spending themselves in motion; now wheeling, circling in the sky, now settling to feed on the rich new-turned soil, but even when they fed it was though they did so without hunger, without desire. Restlessness drove them to the skies again. Black and white, jackdaw and gull, mingled in strange partnership, seeking some sort of liberation, never satisfied, never still. Flocks of starlings, rustling like silk, flew to fresh pasture, driven by the same necessity of movement, and the smaller birds, the finches and the larks, scattered from tree to hedge as if compelled. Nat watched them, and he watched the sea birds too. Down in the bay they waited for the tide. They had more patience. Oyster-catchers, redshank, sanderling and curlew watched by the water's edge; as the slow sea sucked at the shore and then withdrew, leaving the strip of seaweed bare and the shingle churned, the sea birds raced and ran upon the beaches. Then that same impulse to flight seized upon them too. Crying, whistling, calling, they skimmed the placid sea and left the shore. Make haste, make speed, hurry and begone; yet where, and to what purpose? The restless urge of autumn, unsatisfying, sad, had put a spell upon them and they must flock, and wheel, and cry; they must spill themselves of motion before winter came. Perhaps, thought Nat, munching his pasty by the cliff's edge, a message comes to the birds in autumn, like a warning. Winter is coming. Many of them perish. And like people who, apprehensive of death before their time, drive themselves to work or folly, the birds do likewise. The birds had been more restless than ever this fall of the year, the agitation more marked because the days were still. As the tractor traced its path up and down the western hills, the figure of the farmer silhouetted on the driving seat, the whole matchine and the man upon it would be lost momentarily in the great cloud of wheeling, crying birds. There were many more than usual, Nat was sure of this. Always, in autumn, they followed the plough, but not in great flocks like these, nor with such clamour. Nat remaked upon it, when the hedging was finished for the day. "Yes," said the farmer, "there are more birds about than usual; I've noticed it too. And, daring, some of them, taking no notice of the tractor. One or two gulls came so close to my head this afternoon I thought they'd knock my cap off! As it was, I could scarcely see what I was doing, when they were overhead and I had the sun in my eyes. I have a notion the weather will change. It will be a hard winter. That's why the birds are restless." Nat, tramping home across the fields and down the lane to his cottage, saw the birds still flocking over the western hills, in the last glow of the sun. No wind, and the grey sea calm and full. Campion in bloom yet in the hedges, and the air mild. The farmer was right, though, and it was that night the weather turned. Nat's bedroom faced east. He woke just after two and heard the wind in the chimney. Not the storm and bluster of a sou'westerly gale, bringing the rain, but east wind, cold and dry. It sounded hollow in the chimney, and a loose slate rattled on the roof. Nat listened, and he could hear the sea roaring in the bay. Even the air in the small bedroom had turned chill: a draught came under the skirting of the door, blowing upon the bed. Nat drew the blanket around him, leant closer to the back of his sleeping wife, and stayed wakeful, watchful, aware of misgiving without cause. Then he heard tapping on the window. There was no creeper on the cottage walls to break loose and scratch upon the pane. He listened, and the tapping continued until, irritated by the sound, Nat got out of bed and went to the window. He opened it, and as he did so something brushed his hand, jabbing at his knuckles, grazing the skin. Then he saw the flutter of the wings and it was gone, over the roof, behind the cottage. It was a bird, what kind of bird he could not tell. The wind must have driven it to shelter on the sill. He shut the window and went back to bed, but feeling his knuckles wet he put his mouth to the scratch. The bird had drawn blood. Frightened, he supposed, and bewildered, the bird, seeking shelter, had stabbed at him in the darkness. Once more he settled himself to sleep. Presently the tapping came again, this time more forceful, more insistent, and now his wife woke at the sound, and turning in the bed said to him, "See to the window, Nat, it's rattling." "I've already seen to it," he told her, "there's some bird there, trying to get in. Can't you hear the wind? It's blowing from the east, driving the birds to shelter." "Send them away," she said. "I can't sleep with that noise." He went to the window for the second time, and now when he opened it there was not one bird upon the sill but half a dozen; they flew straight into his face, attacking him. He shouted, striking out at them with his arms, scattering them; like the first one, they flew over the roof and disappeared. Quickly he let the window fall and latched it. "Did you hear that?" he said. "They went for me. Tried to peck my eyes." He stood by the window, peering into the darkness, and could see nothing. His wife, heavy with sleep, murmured from the bed. "I'm not making it up" he said, angry at her suggestion. "I tell you the birds were on the sill, trying to get into the room." Suddenly a frightened cry came from the room across the passage where the children slept. "It's Jill," said his wife, roused at the sound, sitting up in bed. "Go to her, see what's the matter." Nat lit the candle, but when he opened the bedroom door to cross the passage the draught blew out of the flame. There came a second cry of terror, this time from both children, and stumbling into their room he felt the beatings of wings about him in the darkness. The window was wide open. Through it came the birds, hitting first the ceiling and the walls, then swerving in mid flight, turning to the children in their beds. "It's all right, I'm here," shouted Nat, and the children flung themselves, screaming, upon him, while in the darkness the birds rose and dived and came for him again. "What is it, Nat, what's happened?" his wife called from the further bedroom, and swiftly he pushed the children through the door to the passage and shut it upon them, so that he was alone now, in their bedroom, with the birds. He seized a blanket from the nearest bed, and using it as a weapon flung it to the right and left about him in the air. He felt the thud of bodies, heard the fluttering of wings, but they were not yet defeated, for again and again they returned to the assault, jabbing his hands, his head, the little stabbing beaks sharp as a pointed fork. The blanket became a weapon of defense, he wound it about his head, and then in greater darkness beat at the birds with his bare hands. He dare not stumble to the door and open it, lest in doing so the birds should follow him. How long he fought with them in the darkness he could not tell, but at last the beating of the wings about him lessened and then withdrew, and through the density of the blanket he was aware of light. He waited, listened; there was no sound except the fretful crying of one of the children from the bedroom beyond. The fluttering, the whirring of the wings had ceased. He took the blanket from his head and stared about him. The cold grey morning light exposed the room. Dawn, and the open window, had called the living birds; the dead lay on the floor. Nat gazed at the little corpses, shocked and horrified. They were all small birds, none of any size; there must have been fifty of them lying there upon the floor. There were robins, finches, sparrows, blue tits, larks and bramblings, birds that by nature's law kept to their own flock and their own territory, and now, joining one with another in their urge for battle, had destroyed themselves against the bedroom walls, or in the strife had been destroyed by him. Some had lost feathers in the fight, others had blood, his blood, upon their beaks. Sickened, Nat went to the window and stared out across his patch of garden to the fields. It was bitter cold, and the ground had all the hard black look of frost. Not white frost,, to shine in the morning sun, but the black frost that the east wind brings. The sea, fiercer now with the turning tide, whitecapped and steep, broke harshly in the bay. Of the birds there was no sign. Not a sparrow chattered in the hedge beyond the garden gate, no early missile-thrush or blackbird pecked on the grass for worms. There was no sound at all but the east wind and the sea. Nat shut the window and the door of the small bedroom, and went back across the passage to his own. His wife sat up in bed, one child asleep beside her, the smaller in her arms, his face bandaged. The curtains were tightly drawn across the window, the candles lit. Her face looked garish in the yellow light. She shook her head for silence. "He's sleeping now,' she whispered, "but only just. Something must have cut him, there was blood at the corner of his eyes. Jill said it was the birds. She said she woke up and the birds were in the room." His wife looked up at Nat, searching his face for confirmation. She looked terrified, bewildered, and he did not want her to know that he was also shaken, dazed almost, by the events of the past few hours. "There are birds in there," he said, "dead birds, nearly fifty of them. Robins, wrens, all the little birds from hereabouts. It's as though madness seized them, with the east wind." He sat down on the bed beside his wife, and held her hand. "It's the weather," he said, "it must be that, it's the hard weather. They aren't the birds, maybe, from here around. They've been driven down, from up country." "But Nat," whispered his wife, "it's only this night that the weather turned. There's been no snow to drive them. And they can't be hungry yet. There's food for them, out there, in the fields." "It's the weather," repeated Nat, "I tell you, it's the weather." His face too was drawn and tired, like hers. They stared at one another for a while without speaking. "I'll go downstairs and make a cup of tea," he said. The sight of the kitchen reassured him. The cups and saucers, neatly stacked upon the dresser, the table and the chairs, his wife's roll of knitting on her basket chair, the children's toys in a corner cupboard. He knelt down, raked out the old embers and relit the fire. The glowing sticks brought normality, the steaming kettle and the brown teapot comfort and security. He drank his tea, carried a cup to his wife. Then he washed in the scullery, and putting on his boots, opened the back door. The sky was hard and leaden, and the brown hills that had gleamed in the sun the day before looked dark and bare. The east wind, like a razor, stripped the trees, and the leaves, crackling and dry, shivered and scattered with the wind's blast. Nat stubbed the earth with his boot. It was frozen hard. He had never known a change so swift and sudden. Black winter had descended in a single night. The children were awake now. Jill was chattering upstairs and young Johnny crying once again. Nat heard his wife's voice, soothing, comforting. Presently they came down. He had breakfast ready for them, and the routine of the day began. "Did you drive away the birds?" asked Jill, restored to calm because of the kitchen fire, because of day, because of breakfast. "Yes, they've all gone now," said Nat. "It was the east wind brought them in. They were frightened and lost. They wanted shelter." "They tried to peck us," said Jill. "They went for Johnny's eyes." "Fright made them do that," said Nat. "They didn't know where they were, in the dark bedroom." "I hope they won't come again," said Jill. "Perhaps if we put bread for them outside the window they will eat that and fly away." She finished her breakfast and then went for her coat and hood, her school books and her satchel. Nat said nothing, but his wife looked at him from across the table. A silent message passed between them. "I'll walk with her to the bus," he said. "I don't go to the farm today." And while the child was washing in the scullery he said to his wife, "Keep all the windows closed, and the doors too. Just to be on the safe side. I'll go to the farm. Find out if they heard anything in the night." Then he walked his small daughter up the lane. She seemed to have forgotten her experience of night before. She danced ahead of him, chasing the leaves, her face, whipped with the cold and rose under the pixie hood. "Is it going to snow, Dad?" she said, "It's cold enough." He glanced up at the bleak sky, felt the tear at his shoulders. "No," he said, "it's not going to snow. This is a black winter, not a white one." All the while he searched the hedgerows for the birds, glanced over the top of them to the fields beyond, looked to the small wood above the farm where the rocks and jackdaws gathered. He saw none. The other children waited by the bus stop, muffled, hooded like Jill, the faces white and pinched with cold. Jill ran to them, waving. "My Dad says it won't snow," she called, "it's going to be a black winter." She said nothing of the birds. She began to push and struggle with another little girl. The birds came ambling up the hill. Nat saw her on it, then turned and walked back towards the farm. It was not his day for work, but he wanted to satisfy himself that all was well. Jim, the cowman, was clattering in the yard. "Boss around?" asked Nat. "Gone to market", said Jim. "It's Tuesday, isn't it?" He clumped off round the corner of a shed. He had no time for Nat. Nat was said to be superior. Read books, and the like. Nat had forgotten it was Tuesday. This showed how the events of the preceding night had shaken him. He went to the back door of the farmhouse and heard Mrs. Trigg singing in the kitchen, the wireless making a background to her song. "Are you there, missus?" called out Nat. She came to the door, beaming, broad, a good-tempered woman. "Hullo, Mr. Hocken," she said. "Can you tell me where this cold is coming from? Is it Russia? I've never seen such a change. And, it's going on, the wireless says. Something to do with the Artic Circle." "We didn't turn one the wireless this morning," said Nat. "Fact is, we had trouble in the night." "Kiddies poorly?" "No..." He hardly knew how to explain it. Now, in daylight, the battle of the birds would sound absurd. He tried to tell Mrs. Trigg what had happened, but he could see from her eyes she thought his story was the result of a nightmare. "Sure they were real birds," she said, smiling, "with proper feathers and all? Not the funny-shaped kind, that the men see after closing hours on a Saturday night?" "Mrs. Trigg," he said, "there are fifty dead birds, robins, wrens and such, lying low on the floor of the children's bedroom. They went for me; they tried to go for young Johnny's eyes." Mrs. Trigg stared at him doubtfully. "Well there, now," she answered, "I suppose the weather brought them. Once in the bedroom, they wouldn't know where they were to. Foreign birds maybe, from that Artic Circle." "No," said Nat, "they were the birds you about her every day." "Funny thing," said Mrs. Trigg, "no explaining it, really. You ought to write up and ask the Guardian. They'd have some answer for it. Well, I must be getting on." She nodded, smiled, and went back into the kitchen. Nat, dissatisfied, turned to the farm gate. Had it not been for those corpses on the bedroom floor, which he must now collect and bury somewhere, he would have considered the tale exaggeration too. Jim was standing by the gate. "Had any trouble with the birds?" asked Nat. "Birds? What birds?" "We got them up our place last night. Scores of them, came in the children's bedroom. Quite savage they were." "Oh?" It took time for anything to penetrate Jim's head. "Never heard of birds acting savage," he said at length. "They get tame, like, sometimes. I've seen them come to the windows, for crumbs." "These birds last night weren't tame." "No? Cold maybe. Hungry. You put out some crumbs." Jim was no more interested than Mrs. Trigg had been. It was, Nat thought, like air raids in the war. No one down this end of the country knew what the Plymouth folk had seen and suffered. You had to endure something yourself before it touched you. He walked back along the lane and crossed the stile to his cottage. He found his wife in the kitchen with young Johnny. "See anyone?" she asked. "Mrs. Trigg and Jim," he answered. "I don't think they believed me. Anyway, nothing wrong up there." "You might take the birds away," she said. "I daren't go into the room to make the beds until you do. I'm scared." "Nothing to scare you now," said Nat. "They're dead, aren't they?" He went up with a sack and dropped the stiff bodies into it, one by one. Yes, there were fifty of them, all told. Just the ordinary common birds of the hedgerow, nothing as large even as a thrush. It must have been fright that made them act the way they did. Blue tits, wrens, it was incredible to think of the power of their small beaks, jabbing at his face and hands the night before. He took the sack out into the garden and was faced now with a fresh problem. The ground was too hard to dig. It was frozen solid, yet no snow had fallen, nothing had happened in the past hours but the coming of the east wind. It was unnatural, queer. The weather prophets must be right. The change was something connected with the Artic Circle. The wind seemed to cut him to the bone as he stood there, uncertainly, holding the sack. He could see the whitecapped seas breaking down under in the bay. He decided to take the birds to the shore and bury them. When he reached the beach below the headland he could scarcely stand, the force of the east wind was so strong. It hurt to draw breath, and his bare hands were blue. Never had he known such cold, not in all the bad winters he could remember. It was low tide. He crunched his way over the shingle to the softer sand and then, his back to the wind, ground a pit in the sand with his heel. He meant to drop the birds into it, but as he opened up the sack the force of the wind carried them, lifted them, as though in flight again, and they were blown away from him along the beach, tossed like feathers, spread and scattered, the bodies of the fifty frozen birds. There was something ugly in the sight. He did not like it. The dead birds were swept away from him by the wind. "The tide will take them when it turns," he said to himself. He looked ou to sea and watched the crested breakers, combing green. They rose swiftly, curled, and broke again, and because it was ebb tide the roar was distant, more remote, lacking the sound and thunder of the flood. Then he saw them. The gulls. Out there, riding the seas. What he had thought at first to be the whitecaps of the waves were gulls. Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands... They rose and feel in the trough of the seas, heads to the wind, like a mightly fleet at anchor, waiting on the tide. To eastward, and to the west, the gulls were there. They stretched as far as his eyes could reach, in close formation, line upon line. Had the sea been still they would have covered the bay like a white cloud, head to head, body packed to body. Only the east wind, whipping the sea to breakers, hid them from the above. Nat turned, and leaving the beach climbed the steep path home. Someone should know of this. Someone should be told. Something was happening, because of the east wind and the weather, that he did not understand. He wondered if he should go to the call box by the bus stop and ring up the police. Yet what could they do? What could anyone do? Tens and thousands of gulls riding the sea there, in the bay, because of storm, because of hunger. The police would think him mad, or drunk, or take the statement from him with great calm. "Thank you. Yes, the matter has already been reported. The hard weather is driving the birds inland in great numbers." Nat looked about him. Still no sign of any other bird. Perhaps the cold had sent them all from up country? As he drew near to the cottage his wife came to meet him, at the door. She called to him, excited. "Nat," she said, "it's on the wireless. They've just read out a special news bulletin. I've written it down." "What's on the wireless?" he said. "About the birds," she said. "It's not only here, it's everywhere. In London, all over the country. Something has happened to the birds." Together they went to the kitchen. He read the piece of paper lying on the table. "Statement from the Home Office at 11 a.m. today. Reports from all over the country are coming in hourly abou the vast quantity of birds flocking above towns, villages, and outlying districts, causing obstruction and damage and even attacking individuals. It is thought that the Artic air stream, at present covering the British Isles, is causing birds to migrate south in immense numbers, and that intense hunger may drive these birds to attack human beings. Householders are warned to see their windows, doors and chimneys, and to take reasonable precautions for the safety of their children. A further statement will be issued later." A kind of excitement seized Nat; he looked at his wfie in triumph. "There you are," he said, "let's hope they'll hear that at the farm. Mrs. Trigg will know it wasn't any story. It's true. All over the country. I've been telling myself all morning there's something wrong. And just now, down on the beach, I looked out to sea and there are gulls, thousands of them, tens of thousands, you couldn't put a pin between their heads, and they're all out there, riding the sea, waiting." "What are they waiting for, Nat?" she asked. He stared at her, then looked down again at the piece of paper. "I don't know," he said slowly. "It says here the birds are hungry." He went over to the drawer where he kept his hammer and tools. "What are you going to do, Nat?" "See to the windows and the chimneys too, like they tell you." "You think they would break in, with the windows shut? Those sparrows and robins and such? Why, how could they?" He did not answer. He was not thinking of the robins and the sparrows. He was thinking of the gulls... He went upstairs and worked there the rest of the morning, boarding the windows of the bedrooms, filling up the chimney bases. Good job it was his free day and he was not working at the farm. It reminded him of the old days, at the beginning of the war. He was not married then, and he had made all the blackout boards for his mother's house in Plymouth. Made the shelter too. Nnot that it had been of any use, when the moment came. He wondered if they would take these precautions up at the farm. He doubted it. Too easygoing, Harry Trigg and his missus. Maybe they'd laugh at the whole thing. Go off to a dance or a whist drive. "Dinner's ready." She called him, from the kitchen. "All right. Coming down." He was pleased with his handiwork. The frames fitted nicely over the little panes and at the base of the chimneys. When dinner was over and his wife was washing up, Nat switched over on the one o'clock news. The same announcement was repeated, the one which she had taken down during the morning, but the news bulletin enlarged upon it. "The flocks of birds have caused dislocation in all areas," read the announcer, "and in London the sky was so dense at ten o'clock this morning that it seemed as if the city was covered by a vast black cloud. "The birds settled on rooftops, on window ledges and on chimneys. The species included blackbird, thrush, the common house sparrow, and, as might be expected in the metropolis, a vast quantity of pigeons and starlings, and that frequenter of the London river, the black-headed gull. The sight has been so unusual that traffic came to a standstill in many thoroughfares, work was abandoned in shops and offices, and the streets and pavements were crowded with people standing about to watch the birds." Various incidents were recounted, the suspected reason of cold and hunger stated again, and warnings to housholders repeated. The announcer's voice was smooth and suave. Nat had the impression that this man, in particular, treated the whole business as he would an elaborate joke. There would be others like him, hundreds of them, who did not know what it was to struggle in darkness with a flock of birds. There would be parties tonight in London, like the ones they gave on election nights. People standing about, shouting and laughing, getting drunk. "Come and watch the birds!" Nat switched off the wireless. He got up and started work on the kitchen windows. His wife watched him, young Johnny at her heels. "What boards for down here too?" she said. "'Why, I'll have to light up before three o'clock. I see no call for boards down here." "Better be sure than sorry," answered Nat. "I'm not going to take any chances." "What they ought to do, " she said, "is to call the army out and shoot the birds. That would scare them off." "Let them try," said Nat. "How'd they set about it?" "They have the army to the docks," she said, "when the dockers strike. The soldiers go down and unload the ships." "Yes," said Nat, "and the population of London is eight million or more. Think of all the buildings, all the flats, and houses. Do you think they've enough soldiers to go round shooting birds from every roof?" "I don't know. But something should be done. They ought to do something." Nat thought to himself that "they" were no doubt considering the problem at that very moment, but whatever "they" decided to do in London and the big cities would not help the people here, three hundred miles away. Each householder must look after his own. "How are we off for food?" "Now, Nat, whatever next?" "Never mind. What have you got in the larder?" "It's shopping day tomorrow, you know that. I don't keep uncooked food hanging about, it goes off. Butcher doesn't call till the day after. But I can bring something when I go in tomorrow." Nat did not want to scare her. He thought it possible that she might not go to town tomorrow. He looked in the larder for himself, and in the cupboard where she kept her tins. They would do, for a couple of days. Bread was low. "What about the baker?" "He comes tomorrow too." He saw she had flour. If the baker did not call she enough to bake one loaf. "We'd be better off in the old days," he said, "when the women baked twice a week, and had pilchards salted, and there was food for a family to last a siege, if need be." "I've tried the children with tinned fish, they don't like it," she said. Nat went on hammering the boards across the kitchen windows. Candles. They were low in candles too. That must be another thing she meant to buy tomorrow. Well, it could not be helped. They must go early to bed tonight. That was, if... He got up and went out of the back door and stood in the garden, looking down towards the sea. There had been no sun all day, and now, at barely three o'clock, a kind of darkness had already come, the sky sullen, heavy, colourless like salt. He walked down the path, halfway to the beach, and then he stopped. He could see the tide had turned. The rock that had shown in mid-morning was now covered, but it was not the sea that held his eyes. The gulls had risen. They were circling, hundreds of them, thousands of them, lifting their wings against the wind. It was the gulls that made the darkening of the sky. And they were silent. They made not a sound. They just went on soaring and circling, rising, falling, trying their strength against the wind. Nat turned. He ran up the path, back to the cottage. "I'm going for Jill," he said. "I'll wait for her, at the bus stop." "What's the matter?" asked his wife. "You've gone quite white." "Keep Johnny inside," he said. "Keep the door shut. Light up now, and draw the curtains." "It's only just gone three," she said. "Never mind. Do what I tell you." He looked inside the toolshed, outside the back door. Nothing there of much use. A spade was too heavy, and a fork no good. He took the hoe. It was only possible tool, and light enough to carry. He started walking up the lane to the bus stop, and now and again glanced over his shoulder. The gulls had risen higher now, their cirles were broader, wider, they were spreading out in huge formation across the sky. He hurried on; although he knew the bus would not come to the top of the hill before four o'clock he had to hurry. He passed no one on the way. He was glad of this. No time to stop and chatter. At the top of the hill he waited. He was much too soon. There was half an hour still to go. The east wind came whipping across the fields from the higher ground. He stamped his feet and blew upon his hands. In the distance he could see the clay hills, white and clean, against the heavy pallor of the sky. Something black rose from behind them, like a smudge at first, then wider, becoming deeper, and the smudge became a cloud, and the cloud divided again into five other clouds spreading north, east, south and west, and they were not clouds at all; they were birds. He watched them travel across the sky, and as one section passed overhead, within two or three hundred feet of him, he knew, from their speed, they were bound inland, up country, they had no business with the people here on the peninsula. They were rooks, crows, jackdaws, magpies, jays, all birds that usually preyed upon the smaller species; but this afternoon they were bound on some other mission. "They've been given the towns," thought Nat, " they know what they have to do. We don't matter so much ere. The gulls will serve for us. The others go to the towns." He went to the call box, stepped inside and lifted the receiver. The exchange would do. They would pass the message on. "I'm speaking from Highway," he said, "by the bus stop. I want to report large formations of birds travelling up country. The gulls are also forming in the bay." "All right," answered the voice, laconic, weary. "You'll be sure and pass this message on to the proper quarter?" "Yes...yes..." Impatient now, fed up. The buzzing note resumed. "She's another," thought Nat, "she doesn't care. Maybe she's had to answer calls all day. She hopes to go to the pictures tonight. She'll squeeze some fellow's hand, and point up at the sky, and 'Look at all the them birds!' She doesn't care." The bus came lumbering up the hill. Jill climbed out and three or four other children. The bus went towards the town. "What's the hoe for, Dad?" They crowded around him, laughing, pointing. "I just brought it along," he said. "Come on, now, let's get home. It's cold, no hanging about. Here, you. I'll watch you across the fields, see how you fast you can run." He was speaking to Jill's companions, who came from different families, living in the council homes. A short cut would take them to the cottages. "We want to play a bit in the lane," said one of them. "No, you don't. You go off home, or I'll tell your mammy." They whispered to one another, round-eyed, then scuttled off across the fields. Jill stared at her father, her mouth sullen. "We always play in the lane," she said. "Not tonight, you don't," he said. "Come on now, no dawdling." He could see the gulls now, circling the fields, coming in towards the land. Still silent. Still no sound. "Look, Dad, look over there, look at the gulls." "Yess. Hurry, now." "Where are they flying to? Where are they going?" "Up country, I dare say. Where it's warmer." He seized her hand and dragged her after him along the lane. "Don't go so fast. I can't keep up." The gulls were copying the rocks and crows. They were spreading out in formation across the sky. They headed, in bands of thousands, to the four compass points. "Dad, what is it? What are the gulls doing?' They were not intent upon their flight, as the crows, as the jackdaws had been. They still circled overhead. Nor did they fly so high. It was as thought they waited upon some signal. As though some decision had yet to be given. The order was not clear. "Do you want me to carry you, Jill? Here, come piggyback." This way he might not put on speed; but he was wrong. Jill was heavy. She kept slipping. And she was crying too. His sense of urgency, of fear, had communicated itself to the child. "I wish the gulls would go away. I don't like them. They're coming to closer to the lane." He put her down again. He started running, swinging Jill after him. As they went past the farm turning he saw the farmer backing his car out of the garage. Nat called to him. "Can you give us a lift?" he said. "What's that?" Mr. Trigg turned in the driving seat and stared at them. Then a smile came to his cheerful, rubicund face.