The Snow Goose Page 3

  Watching it, Frith saw no longer the snow goose but the soul of Rhayader taking farewell of her before departing forever.

  She was no longer flying with it, but earthbound. She stretched her arms up into the sky and stood on tiptoes, reaching, and cried "Godspeed! Godspeed, Philip!"

  Frith's tears were stilled. She stood watching silently long after the goose had vanished. Then she went into the lighthouse and secured the picture that Rhayader had painted of her. Hugging it to her breast, she wended her way homeward along the old sea wall.

  Each night, for many weeks thereafter, Frith came to the lighthouse and fed the pinioned birds. Then one early morning a German pilot on a dawn raid mistook the old abandoned light for an active military objective, dived onto it, a screaming steel hawk, and blew it and all it contained into oblivion.

  That evening when Fritha came, the sea had moved in through the breached walls and covered it over. Nothing was left to break the utter desolation. No marsh fowl had dared to return. Only the frightless gulls wheeled and soared and mewed their plaint over the place where it had been.

  Paul Gallico was one of America's most celebrated writers. Besides The Snow Goose— his brilliant short masterpiece —his many best-selling novels include The Poseidon Adventure; Love, Let Me Not Hunger; and The Small Miracle. Paul Gallico died in 1976.

  Beth Peck was first introduced to The Snow Goose in its film adaptation starring Richard Harris. It was the graceful beauty and power of the book, however, that inspired her to illustrate this Gallico classic. Her many illustrated books for children include A Christmas Memory, by Truman Capote, which was called "pure and lovely" by New York magazine, "radiant" by Publishers Weekly, and "beautifully expressive" by The Horn Book. A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Ms. Peck is presently at work on illustrations for Truman Capote's The Thanksgiving Visitor, also to be published by Knopf.

  She lives with her husband and daughter in Wisconsin.