We darted upwards like a wild snipe flying up into a birch-tree, and
again flew on in a straight line. Instead of grass, we caught glimpses
of tree-tops just under our feet. It was strange to see the forest from
above, its bristling back lighted up by the moon. It looked like some huge
slumbering wild beast, and accompanied us with a vast unceasing murmur,
like some inarticulate roar. In one place we crossed a small glade;
intensely black was the jagged streak of shadow along one side of it. Now
and then there was the plaintive cry of a hare below us; above us the owl
hooted, plaintively too; there was a scent in the air of mushrooms, buds,
and dawn-flowers; the moon fairly flooded everything on all sides with
its cold, hard light; the Pleiades gleamed just over our heads. And now
the forest was left behind; a streak of fog stretched out across the open
country; it was the river. We flew along one of its banks, above the
bushes, still and weighed down with moisture. The river's waters at one
moment glimmered with a flash of blue, at another flowed on in darkness, as
it were, in wrath. Here and there a delicate mist moved strangely over the
water, and the water-lilies' cups shone white in maiden pomp with every
petal open to its full, as though they knew their safety out of reach.
I longed to pick one of them, and behold, I found myself at once on the
river's surface.... The damp air struck me an angry blow in the face, just
as I broke the thick stalk of a great flower. We began to fly across from
bank to bank, like the water-fowl we were continually waking up and chasing
before us. More than once we chanced to swoop down on a family of wild
ducks, settled in a circle on an open spot among the reeds, but they did
not stir; at most one of them would thrust out its neck from under its
wing, stare at us, and anxiously poke its beak away again in its fluffy
feathers, and another faintly quacked, while its body twitched a little all
over. We startled one heron; it flew up out of a willow bush, brandishing
its legs and fluttering its wings with clumsy eagerness: it struck me as
remarkably like a German. There was not the splash of a fish to be heard,