I was greatly pleased with them, as
well as with their local name, "everybody's chickens."
Once I feared we had heard the last of them. On a day following a sudden
fall of the mercury, a gale from the north set in at noon, with thunder
and lightning, hail, and torrents of rain. The river was quickly lashed
into foam, and the gale drove the ocean into it through the inlet, till
the shrubbery of the rails' island barely showed above the breakers. The
street was deep under water, and fears were entertained for the new
bridge and the road to the beach. All night the gale continued, and all
the next day till late in the afternoon; and when the river should have
been at low tide, the island was still flooded. Gravitation was
overmatched for the time being. And where were the rails, I asked
myself. They could swim, no doubt, when put to it, but it seemed
impossible that they could survive so fierce an inundation. Well, the
wind ceased, the tide went out at last; and behold, the rails were in
full cry, not a voice missing! How they had managed it was beyond my
ken.
Another island, farther out than that of the rails (but the rails, like
the long-billed marsh wrens, appeared to be present in force all up and
down the river, in suitable places), was occupied nightly as a
crow-roost. Judged by the morning clamor, which, like that of the rails,
I heard from my bed, its population must have been enormous.
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