bolinks first
flew from North America to South America once every year.

How many ages this has been, who knows? Perhaps ever since the icy
glaciers left Maine and made a chance for summer meadows there. Long,
long, long, it has been, that something south of the Amazon has called
to bobolinks and brought them on their way in the fall of the year. So
the same impulse quickened Bob's heart that had stirred all his fathers,
back through countless seasons. The same quiver for flight came to all
the Band of Vagabonds. Was it homesickness? We do not know.

[Illustration: _Something south of the Amazon kept calling to him._]

We only know that a night came when Bob and his companions left the
mountains of Jamaica below them and then behind them. Far, far behind
them lay the island, and far, far ahead the coast they sought. Five
hundred miles between Jamaica and a chance for rest or food. Five
hundred miles; and the night lay about and above them and the waters
lay underneath. The stars shone clear, but they knew not one from
another. No guide, no pilot, no compass, such as we can understand, gave
aid through the hours of their flight. But do you think they were
afraid? Afraid of the dark, of the water, of the miles? Listen, in your
fancy, and hear them call to one another. "Chink," they say; and though
we do not know just what this means, we can tell from the sound that it
is not a note of fear. And why fear? There was no storm to buffet them
that night. They passed near no dazzling lighthouse, to bewilder them.
No danger threatened, and something called them straight and steady on
their way.

Oh, they were wonderful, that band! Perhaps among all living creatures
of the world there is nothing more wonderful than a bird in his migrant
flight--a bird whose blood is fresh with the air he breathes as only a
bird can breathe; whose health is strong with the wholesome feast that
he takes when and where he finds it; whose wings hold him in perfect
flight through unweary miles; whose life is led, we know not how, on,
on, on, and ever in the right direction.

Yes, Bob was wonderful when he flew from the mountains of Jamaica to the
great savannas of Venezuela; but he made no fuss about it--seemed to
feel no special pride. All he said was, "Chink," in the same
matter-of-fact way that his bobolink forefathers had spoken, back
through all the years when they, too, had taken this same flight over
sea in the course of their vagabond jou