THE FIRST FLIGHT
There was not much talking at first. The stress of conflicting emotions
was so fierce that the words choked themselves in his throat, and the
desire for utterance found its only vent in hard breathing.
The intoxication of rapid motion carried him away headlong in more
senses than one. At first he felt as if he never would be able to keep
up; then it seemed as if he never would get down again. For with wings
it is almost easier to rise than to fall, and a first flight is, before
anything else, a series of vivid and audacious surprises.
For a long time Jimbo was so dizzy with excitement and the novelty of
the sensation that he forgot his deliverer altogether.
And what a flight it was! Instead of the steady race of the carrier
pigeon, or of the rooks homeward bound at evening, it was the see-saw
motion of the wren's swinging journey across the lawn; only heavier,
faster, and with more terrific impetus. Up and down, each time with a
rise and fall of twenty feet, he careered, whistling through the summer
night; at the drop of each curve, so low that the scents of dewy grass
rose into his face; at the crest of it, so high that the trees and
hedges often became mere blots upon the dark surface of the earth.
The fields rushed by beneath him; the white roads flashed past like
streaks of snow. Sometimes he shot across sheets of water and felt the
cooler air strike his cheeks; sometimes over sheltered meadows, where
the sunshine had slept all day and the air was still soft and warm; on
and on, as easily as rain dropping from the sky, or wind rushing
earthwards from between the clouds. Everything flew past him at an
astonishing rate--everything but the bright stars that gazed calmly down
overhead; and when he looked up and saw their steadfastness it helped to
keep within bounds the fine alarm of this first excursion into the great
vault of the sky.
"Gently, child!" gasped Miss Lake behind him. "We shall never keep it up
at this rate."
"Oh! but it's so wonderful," he cried, drawing in the air loudly
between his teeth, and shaking his wings rapidly like a hawk before it
drops.
The pace slackened a little and the girl drew up alongside. For some
time they flew forward together in silence.
They had been skirting the edge of a wood, when suddenly the trees fell
away and Jimbo gave a scream and rose fifty feet into the air with a
single bound. Straight in front of him loomed an immense, glaring disc
that seemed to swim suddenly up into the sky above the trees. It hung
there before his eyes and dazzled him.
"It's only the moon," cried Miss Lake from below.
Jimbo dropped through the air to her side again with a gasp.
"I thought it was a big hole in the sky with fire rushing through," he
explained breathlessly.
The boy stared, full of wonder and delight, at the huge flaming circle
that seemed to fill half the heavens in front of him.
"Look out!" cried the governess, seizing his hand.
Whish! whew! whirr! A large bird whipped past them like some winged imp
of darkness, vanishing among the trees far below. There would certainly
have been a collision but for the girl's energetic interference.
"You must be on the look-out for these night-birds," she said. "They fly
so unexpectedly, and, of course, they don't see us properly. Telegraph
wires and church steeples are bad too, but then we shan't fly over
cities much. Keep a good height, it's safer."
They altered their course a little, flying at a different angle, so that
the moon no longer dazzled them. Steering came quite easily by turning
the body, and Jimbo still led the way, the governess following heavily
and with a mighty business of wings and flapping.
It was something to remember, the glory of that first journey through
the air. Sixty miles an hour, and scarcely an effort! Skimming the long
ridges of the hills and rushing through the pure air of mountain tops;
threading the star-beams; bathing themselves from head to foot in an
ocean of cool, clean wind; swimming on the waves of viewless
currents--currents warmed only by the magic of the stars, and kissed by
the burning lips of flying meteors.
Far below them the moonlight touched the fields with silver and the
murmur of the world rose faintly to their ears, trembling, as it were,
with the inarticulate dreams of millions. Everywhere about them thrilled
and sang the unspeakable power of the night. The mystery of its great
heart seemed laid bare before them.
It was like a wonder-journey in some Eastern fairy tale. Sometimes they
passed through zones of sweeter air, perfumed with the scents of hay and
wild flowers; at others, the fresh, damp odour of ploughed fields rose
up to them; or, again, they went spinning over leagues of forest where
the tree-tops stretched beneath them like the surface of a wide, green
sea, sleeping in the moonlight. And, when they crossed open water, the
stars shone reflected in their faces; and all the while the wings,
whirring and purring softly through the darkness, made pleasant music in
their ears.
"I'm tired," declared Jimbo presently.
"Then we'll go down and rest," said his breathless companion with
obvious relief.
She showed him how to spread his wings, sloping them towards the ground
at an angle that enabled him to shoot rapidly downwards, at the same
time regulating his speed by the least upward tilt. It was a glorious
motion, without effort or difficulty, though the pace made it hard to
keep the eyes open, and breathing became almost impossible. They dropped
to within ten feet of the ground and then shot forward again.
But, while the boy was watching his companion's movements, and paying
too little attention to his own, there rose suddenly before him out of
the ground a huge, bulky form of something--and crash--he flew headlong
into it.
Fortunately it was only a haystack; but the speed at which he was going
lodged his head several inches under the thatch, whence he projected
horizontally into space, feet, arms, and wings gyrating furiously. The
governess, however, soon released him with much laughter, and they
dropped down into the fallen hay upon the ground with no worse result
than a shaking.
"Oh, what a lark!" he cried, shaking the hay out of his feathers, and
rubbing his head rather ruefully.
"Except that larks are hardly night-birds," she laughed, helping him.
They settled with folded wings in the shadow of the haystack; and the
big moon, peeping over the edge at them, must have surely wondered to
see such a funny couple, in such a place, and at such an hour.
"Mushrooms!" suddenly cried the governess, springing to her feet. "There
must be lots in this field. I'll go and pick some while you rest a bit."
Off she went, trapesing over the field in the moonlight, her wings
folded behind her, her body bent a little forward as she searched, and
in ten minutes she came back with her hands full. That was undoubtedly
the time to enjoy mushrooms at their best, with the dew still on their
tight little jackets, and the sweet odour of the earth caught under
their umbrellas.
Soon they were all eaten, and Jimbo was lying back on a pile of hay, his
shoulders against the wall of the stack, and his wings gathered round
him like a warm cloak of feathers. He felt cosy and dozy, full of
mushrooms inside and covered with hay and feathers outside. The
governess had once told him that a sort of open-air sleep sometimes came
after a long flight. It was, of course, not a real sleep, but a state in
which everything about oneself is forgotten; no dreams, no movement, no
falling asleep and waking up in the ordinary sense, but a condition of
deep repose in which recuperation is very great.
Jimbo would have been greatly interested, no doubt, to know that his
real body on the bed had also just been receiving nourishment, and was
now passing into a quieter and less feverish condition. The parallel
always held true between himself and his body in the nursery, but he
could not know anything about this, and only supposed that it was this
open-air sleep that he felt gently stealing over him.
It brought at first strange thoughts that carried him far away to other
woods and other fields. While Miss Lake sat beside him eating her
mushrooms, his mind was drawn off to some other little folk. But it was
always stopped just short of them. He never could quite see their faces.
Yet his thoughts continued their search, groping in the darkness; he
felt sure he ought to be sharing his adventures with these other little
persons, whoever they were; they ought to have been sitting beside him
at that very moment, eating mushrooms, combing their wings, comparing
the length of their feathers, and snuggling with him into the warm hay.
But they obstinately hovered just outside his memory, and refused to
come in and surrender themselves. He could not remember who they were,
and his yearnings went unsatisfied up to the stars, as yearnings
generally do, while his thoughts returned weary from their search and he
yielded to the seductions of the soothing open-air sleep.
The moon, meanwhile, rose higher and higher, drawing a silver veil over
the stars. Upon the field the dews of midnight fell silently. A faint
mist rose from the ground and covered the flowers in their dim seclusion
under the hedgerows. The hours slipped away swiftly.
"Come on, Jimbo, boy!" cried the governess at length. "The moon's below
the hills, and we must be off!"
The boy turned and stared sleepily at her from his nest in the hay.
"We've got miles to go. Remember the speed we came at!" she explained,
getting up and arranging her wings.
Jimbo got up slowly and shook himself.
"I've been miles away," he said dreamily, "miles and miles. But I'm
ready to start at once."
They looked about for a raised place to jump from. A ladder stood
against the other side of the haystack. The governess climbed up it and
Jimbo followed her drowsily. Hand in hand they sprang into the air from
the edge of the thatched roof, and their wings spread out like sails to
catch the wind. It smote their faces pleasantly as they plunged
downwards and forwards, and the exhilarating rush of cool air banished
from the boy's head the last vestige of the open-air sleep.
"We must keep up a good pace," cried the governess, taking a stream and
the hedge beyond in a single sweep. "There's a light in the east
already."
As she spoke a dog howled in a farmyard beneath them, and she shot
upwards as though lifted by a sudden gust of wind.
"We're too low," she shouted from above. "That dog felt us near. Come up
higher. It's easier flying, and we've got a long way to go."
Jimbo followed her up till they were several hundred feet above the
earth and the keen air stung their cheeks. Then she led him still
higher, till the meadows looked like the squares on a chess-board and
the trees were like little toy shrubs. Here they rushed along at a
tremendous speed, too fast to speak, their wings churning the air into
little whirlwinds and eddies as they passed, whizzing, whistling,
tearing through space.
The fields, however, were still dim in the shadows that precede the
dawn, and the stars only just beginning to fade, when they saw the dark
outline of the Empty House below them, and began carefully to descend.
Soon they topped the high elms, startling the rooks into noisy cawing,
and then, skimming the wall, sailed stealthily on outspread wings across
the yard.
Cautiously dropping down to the level of the window, they crawled over
the sill into the dark little room, and folded their wings.