shine down on me with a soft sea-green radiance. The sunward sides of
the tree-stems took a glow, and the dew that ran dripping down their
mossy sides trickled blood-red to earth. Elsewhere the shadows were
still black, and strange things began to move in them--things we in our
middle-aged world have never seen the likeness of: beasts half birds,
birds half creeping things, and creeping things which it seemed to me
passed through lesser creations down to the basest life that crawls
without interruption or division.

It was not for me, a sailor, to know much of such things, yet some I
could not fail to notice. On one grey branch overhead, jutting from
a tree-stem where a patch of velvet moss made in the morning glint a
fairy bed, a wonderful flower unfolded. It was a splendid bud, ivory
white, cushioned in leaves, and secured to its place by naked white
roots that clipped the branch like fingers of a lady's hand. Even as I
looked it opened, a pale white star, and hung pensive and inviting on
its mossy cushion. From it came such a ravishing odour that even I,
at the further end of the great scale of life, felt my pulses quicken
and my eyes brighten with cupidity. I was in the very act of climbing
the tree, but before I could move hand or foot two things happened,
whether you take my word for them or no.

Firstly, up through a glade in the underwood, attracted by the odour, came
an ugly brown bird with a capacious beak and shining claws. He perched
near by, and peeped and peered until he made out the flower pining on
her virgin stem, whereat off he hopped to her branch and there, with a
cynical chuckle, strutted to and fro between her and the main stem like
an ill genius guarding a fairy princess.

Surely Heaven would not allow him to tamper with so chaste a bud!