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“Oh, Tom, what was that?”

“Look up,” said I. “‘Tis the birds flying about the light.”

For, of course, our light always drew the sea-birds, especially on dull nights, and ’twas long since we had grown used to the sound of their beating and flapping, and took no notice of it. A moment after I spoke one came dashing against the rigging, and we heard him tumble into the sea; and then one broke his neck against the cage overhead and tumbled dead at our feet. Bathsheba shivered as I tossed him overboard.

“Is it always like this?” she whispered. “I thought ’twas only at the cost of a silly woman’s fears that you saved men’s lives out here.”

“Well,” said I, “this is something more than usual, to be sure.”

For, looking up into the circle of light, we could see now at least a hundred birds flying round and round, and in half an hour’s time there must have been many hundreds. Their white breasts were like a snowstorm; and soon they began to fall thick upon deck. They were not all sea-birds, either.

“Halloa!” said I, “what’s the day of the month?”

“The nineteenth of March.”

“Here’s a wheatear, then,” I said. “In a couple of weeks we shall have the swallows; and, a couple of weeks after, a cuckoo, maybe. So you see that even out here by the Gunnel we know when spring comes along.”

And I began to hum the old song that children sang in the Islands:

The cuckoo is a pretty bird,
He sings as he flies:
He brings us good tidings.
He tells us no lies:
He sucks the sweet flow-ers
For to make his voice clear,
And when he says “Cuckoo!”
The summer is near.

Bathsheba’s eyes were wet for the poor birds, but she took up the song, crooning it soft-like, and persuading the child to sleep:

O, meeting is a pleasure,
But parting is grief,
An inconstant lover
Is worse than a thief;
For a thief at the worst
Will take all that I have;
But an inconstant lover
Sends me to my grave.

Her hand stole into mine as the boy’s eyes closed, and clasped my fingers, entreating me in silence to look and admire him. Our own eyes met over him, and I saw by the lantern-light the happy blush rise and spread over neck and chin and forehead. The flapping of the birds overhead had almost died away, and we lay still, watching the lighthouse flash, far down in the empty darkness.

By and by the clasp of her hand slackened. A star shot down the sky, and I turned. Her eyelids, too, had drooped, and her breath came and went as softly and regularly as the Atlantic swell around us. And my child slept in her arms.

Day was breaking before the first cry awoke her. My father had the breakfast ready, and Old John sang out to hurry. A fair wind went with them to the Islands–a light south-wester. As the boat dropped out of sight, I turned and drew a deep breath of it. It was full of the taste of flowers, and I knew that spring was already at hand, and coming up that way.