ircumnavigate the waters in a comparatively
short time, and might return to Aurora, so far, at least, successful.
Hope filled his heart, and he sang to the wind.

The waves could not rise among these islands, which intercepted them
before they could roll far enough to gather force, so that he had all
the advantage of the gale without its risks. Except a light haze all
round the horizon, the sky was perfectly clear, and it was pleasant now
the strong current of air cooled the sun's heat. As he came round the
islands he constantly met and disturbed parties of waterfowl, mallards,
and coots. Sometimes they merely hid in the weeds, sometimes they rose,
and when they did so passed to his rear.

CHAPTER XXII

DISCOVERIES

This little circumstance of the mallards always flying over him and away
behind, when flushed, presently made Felix speculate on the cause, and
he kept a closer watch. He now saw (what had, indeed, been going on for
some time) that there was a ceaseless stream of waterfowl, mallards,
ducks, coots, moorhens, and lesser grebes coming towards him, swimming
to the westward. As they met him they parted and let him through, or
rose and went over. Next he noticed that the small birds on the islands
were also travelling in the same direction, that is against the wind.
They did not seem in any haste, but flitted from islet to islet, bush to
tree, feeding and gossiping as they went; still the movement was
distinct.

Finches, linnets, blackbirds, thrushes, wrens, and whitethroats, and
many others, all passed him, and he could see the same thing going on to
his right and left. Felix became much interested in this migration, all
the more singular as it was the nesting-time, and hundreds of these
birds must have left their nests with eggs or young behind them. Nothing
that he could think of offered an adequate explanation. He imagined he
saw shoals of fishes going the same way, but the surface of the water
being ruffled, and the canoe sailing rapidly, he could not be certain.
About an hour after he first observed the migration the stream of birds
ceased suddenly.

There were no waterfowls in the water, and no finches in the bushes.
They had evidently all passed. Those in the van of the migratory army
were no doubt scattered and thinly distributed, so that he had been
meeting the flocks a long while before he suspected it. The nearer he
approached their centre the thicker they became, and on getting through