第一部 第三章　训练方向感

PART ONE Chapter Three Training in Direction

Now that, like a newly trained diver, he had overcome his fear of plunging into the air, Gay-Neck ventured on longer and higher flights. In a week's time he was able to fly steadily for half an hour, and when he came home to the roof, he swooped down as gracefully as his parents. There was no more of that panicky beating of wings in order to balance himself as his feet touched the roof.

His parents, who had accompanied Gay-Neck in his preliminary flights, now began to leave him behind, and to fly much higher above him. For a while I thought that they were trying to make him fly still higher; for the son always made an effort to reach the level of his parents. Perhaps his elders were setting the little fellow a superb example. But at last, one day early in June, that explanation of mine was shaken by the following fateful incident. Gay-Neck was flying high: he looked half his usual size. Above him flew his parents, almost as small as a man's fist. They were circling above him with the regularity of a merry-go-round. It looked monotonous and meaningless. I removed my gaze from them; after all, it is not comfortable to look steadily upwards for long. As I lowered my eyes towards the horizon, they were held by a black spot moving swiftly, and growing larger every second. I wondered what sort of bird he was, coming at such a speed in a straight line, for in India birds are named in the Sanskrit, Turyak, or "curve-tracers."

But this one was coming straight, like an arrow. In another two minutes my doubts were dispelled. It was a hawk making for little Gay-Neck. I looked up and beheld a miraculous sight. His father was tumbling steadily down in order to reach his level, while his mother, bent on the same purpose, was making swift downward curves. Ere the terrible hawk had come within ten yards of the innocent little fellow, both his flanks were covered. Now the three flew downwards at a right angle from the path of their enemy. Undeterred by such a move, the hawk charged. At once the three pigeons made a dip that frustrated him, but the force with which he had made the attack was so great that it carried him a long distance beyond them. The pigeons kept on circling in the air with an ever-increasing downward trend. In another minute they were half-way to our roof. Now the hawk changed his mind. He went higher and higher into the sky: in fact, he flew so high that the pigeons could not hear the wind whistling in the feathers of his wings; and as he was above them they could not see their foe. Feeling that they were safe, they relaxed. It was evident that they were not flying so fast as before. Just then I saw that above them, way up, the hawk was folding his wings: he was about to drop, and in an instant he fell upon them like a stone. In desperation I put my fingers in my mouth and made a shrill whistle, a cry of warning. The pigeons dived like a falling sword, yet the hawk followed. Inch by inch, moment by moment he was gaining on them. Faster and faster he fell: now there were scarcely twenty feet between him and his prey. There was no doubt that he was aiming at Gay-Neck. I could see his sinister claws. "Won't those stupid pigeons do anything to save themselves?" I thought in an agony. He was so near him now—if they would only keep their heads, and—Just then they made a vast upward circle. The hawk followed. Then they flew on an even but large elliptical path. If a bird flies in a circle, he either tends to swing to the centre of that circle or away from it. Now the hawk missed their intention, and tended towards the centre, making a small circle inside their big one. No sooner was his back turned to them than the three pigeons made another dive, almost to our roof, but the sinister one was not to be deterred. He followed like a tongue of black lightning. His prey made a curving dive onto the roof, where they were safe at last under my wide spread arms! That instant I heard the shriek of the wind in the air; about a foot above my head the hawk flew by, his eyes blazing with yellow fire and his claws quivering like the tongue of a viper. As he passed I could hear the wind still whistling in his feathers.

After that narrow escape of my pet birds, I began to train Gay- Neck to a sense of direction. One day I took all three birds in a cage towards the east of our town. Exactly at nine in the morning I set them free. They came home safely. The next day I took them and equal distance to the west. Inside a week they knew the way to our house from within a radius of at least fifteen miles in any direction.

Since nothing ends smoothly in this world, the training of Gay- Neck finally met with a check. I had taken him and his parents down the Ganges in a boat. When we started, it was about six in the morning. The sky was littered with stray clouds, and a moderate wind was blowing from the south. Our boat was piled high with rice as white as snow on whose top were heaped mangoes red and golden in colour, like a white peak afire with the sunset.

I should have foreseen that such auspicious weather might turn suddenly into a terrible storm, for after all, boy though I was, I knew something about the freaks of the monsoon in June.

Hardly had we gone twenty miles before the first rain-clouds of the season raced across the sky. The velocity of the wind was so great that it ripped off one of the sails of our boat. Seeing that there was no time to be lost, I opened the cage and released the three pigeons. As they struck the wind, they vaulted right over and flew very low, almost falling into the water. They flew thus close to the surface of the river for a quarter of an hour, making very little headway against the hard wind. But they persisted, and another ten minutes saw them safely tacking and flying landward. Just about the time they had reached the string of villages on our left, the sky grew pitch black, a torrential cloudburst blotted everything out, and we saw nothing but inky sheets of water through which the lightning zigzagged and danced the dance of death. I gave up all hope of finding my pigeons again. We were almost shipwrecked ourselves, but fortunately our boat was beached on the shore of a village. Next morning, when I came home by train, I found two wet pigeons instead of three. Gay-Neck's father had perished in the storm. No doubt it was all my fault; and for the few days that followed, our house was given up to mourning. The two pigeons and I used to go up on the roof, whenever the rain left off a bit, in order to scan the sky for a glimpse of the father. Alas, he never returned.