A formal report reached the office of the Clerk of the Reed-Bed Subcommittee on Friday morning. It was filed by the fishing party of mallards from the upper bend, the same party readers will know from the dispatch of the second of May. This report is not about a heron. It is about lights. It goes before the next Wednesday session.
The statement is given below as filed, whole and with the party’s leave, with nothing added inside it.
Sir, On the evening of Wednesday, the twenty-second instant, an hour after sundown and in conditions of good visibility, this party observed at the upper bend three lights, of a small and steady character, approximately one wing-span above the water and in a configuration which, at the time, appeared to be approaching the bend from the direction of the boundary hedge. The lights remained visible for some minutes, then ceased. They were not, in the party’s collective view, the moon. They were not the storm of three winters past, that having occurred at a different season and producing lights of a different kind. We have filed this report at the earliest opportunity and remain available for further questions, though we should note that we cannot be at the upper bend tonight.
A FISHING PARTY OF MALLARDS, OF THE UPPER BEND
Your correspondent was at the Clerk’s office by the second honk on Friday. The Clerk confirmed receipt. He put the request to reproduce the statement to the party, and word came back through the customary channels in the early afternoon that the party did not object. So the text above stands, in full, on the party’s own authority.
What the lights are is beyond this dispatch. Nothing in the pond’s recent record accounts for them. The older residents, asked on Friday afternoon, could match them to nothing they knew. The older drakes had at last returned to the western end of the south bank, their unaccountable Friday off behind them. One drake there, a bird this paper trusts in ordinary matters, offered only this. The upper bend had more than once been the quarter of the pond a surprise came out of. He let it rest there.
The party’s caveats are worth setting down, because a party that rules things out carefully tells you as much by what it leaves standing as by what it strikes, and this one struck two large possibilities and left the field otherwise open. It ruled out the moon. On that night the moon was, by a check against the almanac, in a phase and at an hour the description could not have meant. It ruled out the great blow that reshaped the east channel, whose lights the older drakes confirm were of another kind altogether. It did not rule out anything further.
The Junior Member, found late in the afternoon, said he knew of the filing and had nothing to add at this hour. The Cultural Subcommittee confirmed it had programmed no activity of any kind at the upper bend for the period, which closes off the one tidy explanation that might have been offered without ever leaving the desk. The Travelling Drake would have been the gazette’s man for upper-bend matters on any past form. He is, as reported here earlier in the week, still on his way back and not to be had for comment.
The long-resident frog of the southern waters, asked by indirect means on Friday afternoon, would not be drawn. He did not, by report, call speculation inappropriate. He called it premature. The distinction was taken, and he was left to his pond.
The matter goes to the next Wednesday session, deferred pending further word. The gazette records the report as filed and notes it open. On any other story one might wait for a second, conflicting account to come in and muddy the first. Here there is only the one. It is the only account on record, of anything.
What the lights were is not known here. Better to say so than to guess.