EVENING SONG.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 159, 6 July 1940, Page 2 (Supplement)

EVENING SONG.

(By Pajt Pricp, 55, Onewa Ron J, Northeote.) Evening comes and I stand 'alone, Watching the shadows fall, And 1 isteninsr in wrapt ecstasy To the thrush's madrigal. Perched overhead on a poplar tree His tiny form is s^en In his pulpit high against the sky, His church a golden gleam. No sweeter note from mortal throat Has ever yet been heard. And my heart soars high 'twixt earth and stay At the song of a tiny bird.

w-hr> said he could see the name of the steamer long before anyone reallv could. "It's the Thunderer. It's the Victory" (which were the names on his sailor caps). -I can see the admiral. I can see the captain. He's waving."' But all he could really see were the boobies oh our o\Vh shore. It turned out to be thei Royal Mail Steam Packet Oneida. The wind had changed when our captain had sailed away from u 6 ; they had no hope of making any port, let alone Pemambuco out luckily they fell in with a ship winch took them up and dropped them fifteen miles from the harbour Tliev rowed ashore, and the English' Consul took them to the captain of the Oneida who was just starting for England. In a couple of hours we were on a deck again, and this time it wae not England, but our desert island we watched grow farther and farther awav and fade, into the haze. There was hardly anything to be seen of the Duncan Dunbar except the cloud of seagulls over her. °

We hung over the rail and watched till the last possible moment, our eves glued to our own particular bit of island with our own particular fishing pools. Aiid so on till there was nothing to fee but the line of surf that had showed the first morning when we stood on the deck of the Duncan Dunbar wondering what happen. We were thank° ftil to be. caved, of course, like everyone else, but there was no denying we had got fond of our own bit of island. And I would have given anything for mv trousers again; Mama* had made me give them to one of the cabin boys. It seemed extraordinary to eat as much as we. wanted. One of the passengers who watched 11s have dinner kept saying, "Prodigious! Prodigious!" meaning our appetites. Knives and forks, too make eating easier in a way. Verv soon we got used to everything and were our ordinary selves again, "doinf lesson* and saving the Catechism and wearing button boots that the kind passengers lent us. Very soon, in fact we were on dry land again, walking the streets of Southampton, and our island,, lying miles away in the hot sun in its fringe of surf, became just a dream we had half forgotten and could scarcelv believe. THE END.'