In an hour or two the breeze increased considerably, and travelling so much quicker, he found it required all his dexterity to steer past the islands and clear the banks upon which he was drifting.  Once or twice he grazed the willows that overhung the water, and heard the keel of the canoe drag on the bottom.  As much as possible he bore away from the mainland, steering south-east, thinking to find deeper water, and to be free of the islets.  He succeeded in the first, but the islets were now so numerous that he could not tell where the open Lake was.  The farther the afternoon advanced, the more the breeze freshened, till occasionally, as it blew between the islands, it struck his mast almost with the force of a gale.  Felix welcomed the wind, which would enable him to make great progress before evening.  If such favouring breezes would continue, he could circumnavigate the waters in a comparatively short time, and might return to Aurora, so far, at least, successful.  Hope filled his heart, and he sang to the wind.

The waves could not rise among these islands, which intercepted them before they could roll far enough to gather force, so that he had all the advantage of the gale without its risks.  Except a light haze all round the horizon, the sky was perfectly clear, and it was pleasant now the strong current of air cooled the sun’s heat.  As he came round the islands he constantly met and disturbed parties of waterfowl, mallards, and coots.  Sometimes they merely hid in the weeds, sometimes they rose, and when they did so passed to his rear.

CHAPTER XXII

DISCOVERIES

This little circumstance of the mallards always flying over him and away behind, when flushed, presently made Felix speculate on the cause, and he kept a closer watch.  He now saw (what had, indeed, been going on for some time) that there was a ceaseless stream of waterfowl, mallards, ducks, coots, moorhens, and lesser grebes coming towards him, swimming to the westward.  As they met him they parted and let him through, or rose and went over.  Next he noticed that the small birds on the islands were also travelling in the same direction, that is against the wind.  They did not seem in any haste, but flitted from islet to islet, bush to tree, feeding and gossiping as they went; still the movement was distinct.

Finches, linnets, blackbirds, thrushes, wrens, and whitethroats, and many others, all passed him, and he could see the same thing going on to his right and left.  Felix became much interested in this migration, all the more singular as it was the nesting-time, and hundreds of these birds must have left their nests with eggs or young behind them.  Nothing that he could think of offered an adequate explanation.  He imagined he saw shoals of fishes going the same way, but the surface of the water being ruffled, and the canoe sailing rapidly, he could not be certain.  About an hour after he first observed the migration the stream of birds ceased suddenly.