Under the Sea Wind Read Online Free

began to spill. Almost in the same instant the feathered antennae of the crab appeared above the sand. Running under the very crest of the green water hill, Silverbar probed vigorously in the wet sand with opened bill and drew out the crab. Before the water could so much as wet her legs she turned and fled up the beach.
    While the sun still came in level rays across the water, others of the sanderling flock joined Blackfoot and Silverbar and the beach was soon dotted with small shore birds.
    A tern came flying along the surf line, his black-capped head bent and his eyes alert for the movement of fish in the water. He watched the sanderlings closely, for sometimes a small beach bird could be frightened into giving up its catch. When the tern saw Blackfoot run swiftly into the path of a wave and seize a crab he slanted down menacingly, screaming threats in a shrill, grating voice.
    Tee-ar-r-r! Tee-ar-r-r! rattled the tern.
    The swoop of the white-winged bird, which was twice as large as the sanderling, took Blackfoot by surprise, for his senses had been occupied with eluding the onrush of water and preventing the escape of the large crab held in his bill. He sprang into the air with a sharp Keet! Keet! and circled out over the surf. The tern whirled after him in pursuit, crying loudly.
    In his ability to bank and pivot in the air Blackfoot was fully the equal of the tern. The two birds, darting and twisting and turning, coming up sharply together and falling away again into the wave troughs, passed out beyond the breakers and the sound of their voices was lost to the sanderling flock on the beach.
    As he rose steeply into the air in pursuit of Blackfoot, the tern caught sight of a glint of silver in the water below. He bent his head to mark the new prey more certainly and saw the green water spangled with silver streaks as the sun struck the flanks of a school of feeding silversides. Instantly the tern tipped his body steeply into a plane perpendicular to the water. He fell like a stone, although his body could not have weighed more than a few ounces, struck the water with a splash and a shower of spray, and in a matter of seconds emerged with a fish curling in his bill. By this time Blackfoot, forgotten by the tern in the excitement engendered by the bright flashes in the water, had reached the shore and dropped down among the feeding sanderlings, where he was running and probing busily as before.
    After the tide turned, the water pressed stronger from the sea. The waves came in with a deeper swell and a heavier crash, warning the sanderlings that feeding on the ocean beach was no longer safe. The flock wheeled out over the sea, with a flashing of the white wing bars that distinguished them from other sandpipers. They flew low over the crests of the waves as they traveled up the beach. So they came to the point of land called Ship’s Shoal, where the sea had broken through the barrier island to the sound years before.
    At the point the inlet beach lay level as a floor from the sea on the south side to the sound on the north. The wide sand flat was a favorite resting place for sandpipers, plovers, and other shore birds; and it was loved, too, by the terns, the skimmers, and the gulls, who make their living from the sea, but gather to rest on shores and sandspits.
    That morning the inlet beach was thronged with birds, resting and waiting for the tide turn that they might feed again, fueling small bodies for the northward journey. It was the month of May, and the great spring migration of the shore birds was at its height. Weeks before, the waterfowl had left the sounds. Two spring tides and two neap tides had passed since the last skein of snow geese had drifted to the north, like wisps of cloud in the sky. The mergansers had gone in February, looking for the first breaking up of the ice in the northern lakes, and soon after them the canvasbacks had left the wild celery beds of the estuary and followed the retreating winter