He lay absolutely quiet for at least five minutes, staring up at
the brilliant blue arch above him. Then he began to speak rapidly
and earnestly; a man just close enough to hear his voice sweeping
up to a certain rhetorical climax, pausing there and commencing
again with a rhythmic fluency of intonation, might have thought
that he was repeating poetry; indeed, it sounded like some of
Milton's majestic blank verse, but it was not. Andy was engaged
in a methodical, scientific, reprehensibly soul-satisfying period
of swearing.
A curlew, soaring low, with long beak outstretched before him,
and long legs outstretched behind cast a beady eye upon him, and
shrilled "Cor-reck! Cor-reck!" in unregenerate approbation of the
blasphemy.
Andy stopped suddenly and laughed. "Glad you agree with me, old
sport," he addressed the bird whimsically, with a reaction to his
normally cheerful outlook. "Sheepherders are all those things I
named over, birdie, and some that I can't think of at present."
He tried again, this time with a more careful realization of his
limitations, to assume an upright position; and being a
persevering young man, and one with a ready wit, he managed at
length to wriggle himself back upon the slope from which he had
slid in his sleep, and, by digging in his heels and going
carefully, he did at last rise upon his knees, and from there
triumphantly to his feet.
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