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myNotes
15 It sent a tingle through me, those two words, and I had to look up from
the book. I imagined Benjamin Molloy peering through his spyglass, his
hand tightening around the gondola’s rim. What was it he’d seen that told
him these creatures weren’t birds?

16 Their wings are not feathered. I was mistaken about their beaks; they
have none. Considerably bigger than either magnificent frigate birds or
albatross. One of the creatures broke from the flock and made a slow circle of
the Endurance, quite high at first, than spiraling down closer to the gondola.
It seemed very curious. Its body is easily six feet in length and closely furred.
Its forelegs seem to turn into wings, like a bat’s, with a single protruding claw
at the wing’s leading edge. The span I would estimate as eight or nine feet
across. Its rear legs are stubby but with wickedly sharp curved claws. I feared
for the balloon, should he collide with it. How can such a creature stay aloft?

It looks too heavy. It is fiercely agile in the sky, dipping and spinning and
diving with ease, its wings infinitely versatile. It fairly seems to leap through
the air. Saw scarcely anything of its face. A gleam of sizable incisors on upper
and lower jaws. A flash of intelligent green-flecked eyes. Then it veered off,
hurtling back toward its fellows.

17 An undiscovered species?

18 I turned the page and there was a picture, a pencil sketch. Just looking
at it made my heart flutter, and I had to sit up and catch my breath. He’d
put the rim of the basket in the foreground, and the silhouette of the island
in the background to give a sense of scale. The creature’s wingspan was
huge. He was a deft hand, the grandfather, that was certain. Couldn’t have
had much time to get it down, but his lines were swift and assured. It was

the strangest-looking thing, half bird, half panther.

September 4

13:25
19 I have dropped into a calmer stratum of air so I can hover over the island
and observe them. They float. They face into the wind and scarcely need beat
their wings. I watched one move not a muscle for hours, sleeping maybe,
bedded down on the air itself. They cannot weigh much.

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