PLEASURES OF FLIGHT
Since the night when Jimbo had nearly fallen into the yard and risked
capture, Fright, the horrible owner of the house, had kept himself well
out of the way, and had allowed himself to be neither seen nor heard.
But the boy was not foolish enough to fall into the other trap, and
imagine, therefore, that He did not know what was going on. Jimbo felt
quite sure that He was only waiting his chance; and the governess's
avoidance of the subject tended to confirm this supposition.
"He's disappeared somewhere and taken the children with him," she
declared when he questioned her. "And now you know almost as much as I
do."
"But not quite!" he laughed mischievously.
"Enough, though," she replied. "We want all our energy for escape when
it comes. Don't bother about anything else for the moment."
During the day, when he was alone, his thoughts and fancies often
terrified him; but at night, when he was rushing through the heavens,
the intense delight of flying drove all minor emotions out of his
consciousness, and he even forgot his one great desire--to escape. One
night, however, something happened that brought it back more keenly than
ever.
He had been out flying alone, but had not gone far when he noticed that
an easterly wind had begun to rise and was blowing steadily behind him.
With the recent instructions fresh in his head, he thought it wiser to
turn homewards rather than fight his way back later against a really
strong wind from this quarter. Flying low along the surface of the
fields so as to avoid its full force, he suddenly rose up with a good
sweep and settled on the top of the wall enclosing the yard.
The moonlight lay bright over everything. His approach had been very
quiet. He was just about to sail across to the window when something
caught his eye, and he hesitated a moment, and stared.
Something was moving at the other end of the courtyard.
It seemed to him that the moonlight suddenly grew pale and ghastly; the
night air turned chilly; shivers began to run up and down his back.
He folded his wings and watched.
At the end of the yard he saw several figures moving busily to and fro
in the shadow of the wall. They were very small; but close beside them
all the time stood a much larger figure which seemed to be directing
their movements. There was no need to look twice; it was impossible to
mistake these terrible little people and their hideous overseer. Horror
rushed over the boy, and a wild scream was out in the night before he
could possibly prevent it. At the same moment a cloud passed over the
face of the moon and the yard was shrouded in darkness.
A minute later the cloud passed off; but while it was still too dark to
see clearly, Jimbo was conscious of a rushing, whispering sound in the
air, and something went past him at a tremendous pace into the sky. The
wind stirred his hair as it passed, and a moment later he heard voices
far away in the distance--up in the sky or within the house he could
not tell--singing mournfully the song he now knew so well:--
We dance with phantoms and with shadows play.
But when he looked down at the yard he saw that it was deserted, and the
corner by the little upright stones lay in the clear moonlight, empty of
figures, large or small.
Shivering with fright, he flew across to the window ledge, and almost
tumbled into the arms of the governess who was standing close inside.
"What's the matter, child?" she asked in a voice that trembled a little.
And, still shuddering, he told her how he thought he had seen the
children working by the gravestones. All her efforts to calm him at
first failed, but after a bit she drew his thoughts to pleasanter
things, and he was not so certain after all that he had not been
deceived by the cunning of the moonlight and the shadows.
A long interval passed, and no further sign was given by the owner of
the house or his band of frightened children. Jimbo soon lost himself
again in the delights of flying and the joy of his increasing powers.
Most of all he enjoyed the quiet, starlit nights before the moon was
up; for the moon dazzled the eyes in the rarefied air where they flew,
whereas the stars gave just enough light to steer by without making it
uncomfortable.
Moreover, the moon often filled him with a kind of faint terror, as of
death; he could never gaze at her white face for long without feeling
that something entered his heart with those silver rays--something that
boded him no good. He never spoke of this to the governess; indeed, he
only recognised it himself when the moon was near the full; but it lay
always in the depths of his being, and he felt dimly that it would have
to be reckoned with before he could really escape for good. He took no
liberties when the moon was at the full.
He loved to hover--for he had learned by this time that most difficult
of all flying feats; to hold the body vertical and whirr the wings
without rising or advancing--he loved to hover on windless nights over
ponds and rivers and see the stars reflected in their still pools.
Indeed, sometimes he hovered till he dropped, and only saved himself
from a wetting by sweeping up in a tremendous curve along the surface of
the water, and thus up into the branches of the trees where the
governess sat waiting for him. And then, after a little rest, they
would launch forth again and fly over fields and woods, sometimes even
as far as the hills that ran down the coast of the sea itself.
They usually flew at a height of about a thousand feet, and the earth
passed beneath them like a great streaked shadow. But as soon as the
moon was up the whole country turned into a fairyland of wonder. Her
light touched the woods with a softened magic, and the fields and hedges
became frosted most delicately. Beneath a thin transparency of mist the
water shone with a silvery brilliance that always enabled them to
distinguish it from the land at any height; while the farms and country
houses were swathed in tender grey shadows through which the trees and
chimneys pierced in slender lines of black. It was wonderful to watch
the shadows everywhere spinning their blue veil of distance that lent
even to the commonest objects something of enchantment and mystery.
Those were wonderful journeys they made together into the pathways of
the silent night, along the unknown courses, into that hushed centre
where they could almost hear the beatings of her great heart--like
winged thoughts searching the huge vault, till the boy ached with the
sensations of speed and distance, and the old yellow moon seemed to
stagger across the sky.
Sometimes they rose very high into freezing air, so high that the earth
became a dull shadow specked with light. They saw the trains running in
all directions with thin threads of smoke shining in the glare of the
open fire-boxes. But they seemed very tiny trains indeed, and stirred in
him no recollections of the semi-annual visits to London town when he
went to the dentist, and lunched with the dreaded grandmother or the
stiff and fashionable aunts.
And when they came down again from these perilous heights, the scents of
the earth rose to meet them, the perfume of woods and fields, and the
smells of the open country.
There was, too, the delight, the curious delight of windy nights, when
the wind smote and buffeted them, knocking them suddenly sideways,
whistling through their feathers as if it wanted to tear them from their
sockets; rushing furiously up underneath their wings with repeated
blows; turning them round, and backwards and forwards, washing them from
head to foot in a tempestuous sea of rapid and unexpected motion.
It was, of course, far easier to fly with a wind than without one. The
difficulty with a violent wind was to get down--not to keep up. The
gusts drove up against the under-surfaces of their wings and kept them
afloat, so that by merely spreading them like sails they could sweep and
circle without a single stroke. Jimbo soon learned to manoeuvre so that
he could turn the strength of a great wind to his own purposes, and
revel in its boisterous waves and currents like a strong swimmer in a
rough sea.
And to listen to the wind as it swept backwards and forwards over the
surface of the earth below was another pleasure; for everything it
touched gave out a definite note. He soon got to know the long sad cry
from the willows, and the little whispering in the tops of the poplar
trees; the crisp, silvery rattle of the birches, and the deep roar from
oaks and beech woods. The sound of a forest was like the shouting of the
sea.
But far more lovely, when they descended a little, and the wind was more
gentle, were the low pipings among the reeds and the little wayward
murmurs under the hedgerows.
The pine trees, however, drew them most, with their weird voices, now
far away, now near, rising upwards with a wind of sighs.
There was a grove of these trees that trooped down to the waters of a
little lake in the hills, and to this spot they often flew when the wind
was low and the music likely, therefore, to be to their taste. For, even
when there was no perceptible wind, these trees seemed always full of
mysterious, mournful whisperings; their branches held soft music that
never quite died away, even when all other trees were silent and
motionless.
Besides these special expeditions, they flew everywhere and anywhere.
They visited the birds in their nests in lofty trees, and exchanged the
time of night with wise-eyed owls staring out upon them from the ivy.
They hovered up the face of great cliffs, and passed the hawks asleep on
perilous ledges; skimmed over lonely marshes, frightening the
water-birds paddling in and out among the reeds. They followed the
windings of streams, singing among the meadows, and flew along the wet
sands as they watched the moon rise out of the sea.
These flights were unadulterated pleasure, and Jimbo thought he could
never have enough of them.
He soon began to notice, too, that the trees emanated something that
affected his own condition. When he sat in their branches this was very
noticeable. Currents of force passed from them into himself. And even
when he flew over their crests he was aware that some woods exhaled
vigorous, life-giving forces, while others tired and depleted him.
Nothing was visible actually, but fine waves seemed to beat up against
his eyes and thoughts, making him stronger or weaker, happy or
melancholy, full of hope and courage, or listless and indifferent.
These emanations of the trees--this giving-forth of their own personal
forces--were, of course, very varied in strength and character. Oaks and
pines were the best combination, he found, before the stress of a long
flight, the former giving him steadiness, and the latter steely
endurance and the power to steer in sinuous, swift curves, without
taking thought or trouble.
Other trees gave other powers. All gave something. It was impossible to
sit among their branches without absorbing some of the subtle and
exhilarating tree-life. He soon learned how to gather it all into
himself, and turn it to account in his own being.
"Sit quietly," the governess said. "Let the forces creep in and stir
about. Do nothing yourself. Give them time to become part of yourself
and mix properly with your own currents. Effort on your part prevents
this, and you weaken them without gaining anything yourself."
Jimbo made all sorts of experiments with trees and rocks and water and
fields, learning gradually the different qualities of force they gave
forth, and how to use them for himself. Nothing, he found, was really
dead. And sometimes he got himself into strange difficulties in the
beginning of his attempts to master and absorb these nature-forces.
"Remember," the governess warned him more than once, when he was
inclined to play tricks, "they are in quite a different world to ours.
You cannot take liberties with them. Even a sympathetic soul like
yourself only touches the fringe of their world. You exchange
surface-messages with them, nothing more. Some trees have terrible
forces just below the surface. They could extinguish you
altogether--absorb you into themselves. Others are naturally hostile.
Some are mere tricksters. Others are shifty and treacherous, like the
hollies, that move about too much. The oak and the pine and the elm are
friendly, and you can always trust them absolutely. But there are
others----!"
She held up a warning finger, and Jimbo's eyes nearly dropped out of his
head.
"No," she added, in reply to his questions, "you can't learn all this at
once. Perhaps----" She hesitated a little. "Perhaps, if you don't
escape, we should have time for all manner of adventures among the trees
and other things--but then, we _are_ going to escape, so there's no good
wasting time over _that_!"