“Phew!” said Mr. Wickham, wiping the perspiration from his forehead. “I’d sooner face Cape Horn and an easterly gale than one of those birds. It’s a funny thing, but you never know what they are thinking about and sometimes it gets you down. When I was on the India Station I spent some leave up-country and another chap and I went off to look at birds. There’s a bird called the stengah, the whisky-soda bird, that’s very shy. Well, we waited for her for two days and at last we got a good view of her, but, by Jove, she gave us such a look that we backed out of her garden on all fours—we’d come up that way, you know, not to alarm her. I’ll never forget the look in her eye. What the stengah would be like here, I don’t like to think. I’d like to let a few loose on the Government when they start
