Gay-Neck

The city of Calcutta, which boasts of a million people, must have at least two million pigeons. Every third Hindu boy has perhaps a dozen pet carriers, tumblers, fantails, and p...

There are two sweet sights in the bird world. One when the mother breaks open her egg in order to bring to light her child, and the other when she broods and feeds him. Gay-Neck...

Now that, like a newly trained diver, he had overcome his fear of plunging into the air, Gay-Neck ventured on longer and higher flights. In a week's time he was able to fly stea...

Since the rain and the heat in the plains proved excessive, my family decided to take us to the Himalayas. If you take a map of India you will find that in its northeast corner...

As we descended into the bleak oblivion of the gorges below, we suddenly found ourselves in a world of deepening dark, though it was hardly three in the afternoon. It was due to...

But the day after our return Gay-Neck flew away again, in the morning, and failed to put in an appearance later. We waited for him most anxiously during four successive days, an...

In the preceding chapter I made scanty references to the places and incidents through which Gay-Neck was recovered. Ghond found his track with certainty the first day of our ten...

In order to make clear to you the swift's skill at architecture, let me first of all draw attention to the swift's handicaps. He has a small beak fit for catching flying insects...

After we returned to town the air was filled with the rumours of a coming war somewhere in Europe. Now that winter was at hand, I decided to give Gay-Neck such training as would...

The new pigeons gradually learnt to fly further and further away from the house as day followed day. At the end of a month they were taken a distance of fifty miles and more and...

Gay-Neck's wounds healed very slowly. Until about the middle of February he could not be made to fly more than ten yards above the roof. The duration of his flight too was very...

By the first week of August, just after the children were born, Hira and Gay-Neck had gone from Calcutta to Bombay, setting sail with Ghond to serve in the world-war. I sent tha...

The next time we were taken to the front was after the Rasseldar recovered from his slight wounds. On this occasion he took both Hira and me. I knew at once that the message we...

About the first week of December, Ghond and Gay-Neck were to go on a reconnaissance trip all by themselves. The place they went to was a forest not far from Ypres, Armentieres,...

All that night preceding the eventful day I slept very little. Though I lay under his coat, Ghond had no knowledge that I was awake. You cannot sleep next to the heart of a man...

"That dog," Ghond took up the story, "must have lost his French master early in the war. Probably the Germans had shot the man, and after that, when he saw his master's home loo...

After about the tenth day of strict and most sincere meditation in the manner he had prescribed, the Lama sent for Gay-Neck and myself. So with the pigeon between my hands, I cl...