The Adventures of Bobby Orde Part 21

"Quok-quok-quok-quok-quok!" in increasing rapidity. It was quite remarkable to observe how the flock, apparently with a fixed destination of its own, would hesitate, waver, finally swing down to investigate. At this, Mr. Kincaid's call became confidential and intimate. It uttered all sorts of clucks and half-notes, telling, probably, of the manifold advantages of feed and shelter offered by this particular pond. Then came the slow circles ending with the final breathless, level-winged rush.

But presently, as the sun mounted higher and higher, even these flights ceased. Mr. Kincaid lit his pipe. Curly made trip after trip, carrying in the game.

"Fun?" enquired Mr. Kincaid succinctly.

"I should think so!" breathed Bobby with rapture.

They sat opposite each other in the sociable silence that seemed to come so easily to them. The wind had risen again, until now it had once more attained the proportions of a respectable gale. Bobby liked to watch the brisk puffs as they hit, spread in a fan-shaped ruffle of dark water and skittered away. In the miniature wavelets possible under the lea, the decoys bobbed gravely, swinging to their anchor strings. The sun flashed from their backs, and from the little waves. All about were the tall stalks of reeds; and ahead, where the open water was, grew tufts of gra.s.ses that looked silvery-brown and somehow intimate when, as now, Bobby looked at them from their own plane of elevation. They waved and bent before the wind, and the reeds across the pond bowed and recovered; and over the low, flat landscape seemed to hover a brown, untamed spirit of wildness.

But, though the wind blew a gale, the duck-boat was so snugly hidden that hardly a breath reached its occupants. The warm rays of the sun shone full down upon them, first driving the early chill from Bobby's bones, then making him sleepy. He fell into a delicious lethargy, running over drowsily the small details of his immediate surroundings.

In the course of a few hours this cosy nest which he had never seen before had become strangely familiar. He experienced a sense of personal acquaintances.h.i.+p with many of the individual reeds; he recognized, as one recognizes an accustomed landscape, the angle at which certain clumps crossed one another; or the vistas allowed by the different interstices. A marsh wren had business among the galleries. Bobby watched it hop in and out of sight, sometimes right side up, sometimes upside down. A dozen times he thought it had gone; but always it came back, flirting its absurd short tail, one bright eye fixed on the occupants of the blind. When Bobby slipped still further into the warm bright land of laziness, he abandoned even the effort of observation, and amused himself by sifting rainbows through his eye-lashes.

"Bobby!" whispered Mr. Kincaid sharply.

He came to with a start, rapping his knee against the gunwale of the boat. Mr. Kincaid held his hand up warningly, then pointed toward the decoys. Bobby looked, and saw, preening its feathers calmly, a live duck rising to the wavelets. Mr. Kincaid handed over two 22-short cartridges.

Bobby's breath caught with a gasp. His fingers trembling, he opened the breach of the Flobert and loaded; then cautiously thrusting the muzzle through an opening in the reeds, tried to aim. But his heart was thumping like a hammer, and do his best he could not hold the wavering sights in alignment. In vain he recalled all the many principles of accurate shooting he had so laboriously acquired in his target practice.

Finally in desperation he pulled the trigger. The duck, with a startled quack, sprang into the air.

"Got one!" chuckled Mr. Kincaid. "That furtherest decoy," he replied to Bobby's unspoken question. "Saw the splinters fly. Must have over-shot three feet."

Bobby, carrying with him the bitterest possible cud of failure, retired within himself and gloomed angrily at the situation from all points of view. He was completely out of conceit with himself. After he had finished his performance, he naturally took to reviewing it and recasting it in terms of success. If he'd only shot at first, before he lost his breath! If he'd only remembered to get his hand away around the grip of the rifle! If he'd only----

As though to test these theories, the Red G.o.ds at this moment vouchsafed him a wonderful favour. As he frowned steadily between the reeds, his attention was dragged by a moving object from its abstractions to that which he gazed on so unseeingly. He came to alertness with a snap. A duck flying not a foot above the water swung in an awkward circle and lit with a long furrowing splash not forty feet away.

Bobby glanced toward Mr. Kincaid. The latter was gazing at the sky, his hands clasped behind his head. Cautiously Bobby reloaded with the other cartridge, and again thrust the rifle muzzle between the reeds. His entire mind was now occupied by a vengeful spirit against himself because of his first miss. Therefore he had no room for self-consciousness or nervousness. The sights aligned with precision, and held rigidly on the mark. His teeth set, Bobby pulled the trigger.

Instantly the duck fell on its side, and, beating the water frantically with its wings, began to kick around in a circle.

"I got him! I got him! Oh, he'll get away!" screeched Bobby in a breath.

At the crack of the rifle Mr. Kincaid had leaped to his feet with surprising agility.

"Well, good boy!" he exclaimed, "I should say you did get him! He won't get away; he's. .h.i.t in the head."

"Is that the way they act when they're hit in the head?" asked Bobby, still doubtful.

"Yes. Fetch him, Curly."

Bobby took the duck from Curly's mouth and held him up by the bill to drain the water, just as he had seen Mr. Kincaid do. Then he laid his prize across the bow and gloated.

It was a very beautiful duck, with an erect topknot of white edged with black running over the top of its head like the plume of a Grecian helmet. The sides of its white breast were covered with feathers of a bright cinnamon tipped with gray; its back was black and gray with fine black edgings; and its wings were dark with a white and iridescent band on each. But what interested Bobby especially was its bill. This differed entirely from the bills of all the other ducks. It was very long and very slender and had teeth!

"What kind is it?" asked Bobby looking up to encounter Mr. Kincaid's amused gaze.

"Well--it's called a merganser in the books," said Mr. Kincaid.

"I'm going to have mama cook it," announced Bobby, and returned to his blissful contemplation.

Mr. Kincaid grinned quietly to himself. He would not spoil the little boy's pleasure by telling him that his first trophy was a fish-duck, and, beautiful as it was, utterly useless.

No more ducks came for a long time after that. The wind continued to increase, blowing from a clear sky, without scuds. By and by Mr. Kincaid produced a package of lunch, and they ate, drinking in turn from the demijohn that Bobby had filled the night before. The sun swung up overhead, and down the westward slope. With the advance of afternoon came more, but scattered, ducks rus.h.i.+ng down the wind at railroad speed, to wheel sometimes into the teeth of it like yachts rounding to as they caught sight of the decoys. When the sun was low and red, thousands of blackbirds began to fly by in an unbroken succession, low to the reeds, uttering their chattering and liquid calls. So numerous were they that the entire outlook seemed filled with the crossing lines of their flight, until Bobby's eyes were bewildered, and he could not tell whether he saw blackbirds near at hand or ducks farther away. Whence they had come or whither they were going he could not guess; but that they had some definite objective he could not doubt. Out from the gray distances of the east they appeared; laboured by against the gale; and disappeared into the red distances of the west.

Now the evening flight of ducks was on in earnest, and the warm excitement of decoy-shooting again gripped hard all three occupants of the boat. Over the wide marshes spread the brief crimson of evening. The sun set and dusk came on. It was first indicated, even before a perceptible diminution of daylight, by the vivid flashes from the gun.

Then the low western horizon turned to a dark band between sky and water, and the heavens immediately above took on a pale green lucence of infinite depth.

"More wind," said Mr. Kincaid, glancing at it.

Finally, although it was still possible plainly to see the incoming ducks against the sky, Mr. Kincaid laid aside his gun and picked up the punt-pole.

"Mustn't shoot much after sun-down," he told Bobby. "If we do, there won't be any here in the morning. Nothing drives the duck off the marshes quicker than evening shooting."

He pushed the duck-boat out into the open. Instantly the weight of the wind became evident. Although on the lea side of the pond, the light boat drifted forward rapidly; and Bobby had to s.n.a.t.c.h suddenly for his cap. Mr. Kincaid snubbed her at the edge of the flock of decoys.

"Pick 'em up, Bobby," said he. "You'll have to do it, while I hold the boat."

Bobby lifted the nearest decoy out of the water and, under direction, wound the anchor line around its neck and stowed it away. This was easy.

Also the next and the next.

But by the time he had lifted the tenth he had discovered a number of things. That a wooden decoy is heavy to lift at arm's length over the gunwale; that it brings with it considerable water; that the anchor lines carry with them a surprisingly greater quant.i.ty of water; that the water is very cold; that said cold water causes the flesh to puff up, the hands to turn numb, and the fingers to ache. This was disagreeable; and Bobby had not been in the habit of continuing to do things after they had become disagreeable.

"My, but this is awful cold work!" said he.

Mr. Kincaid looked at him.

"You aren't going to quit, are you?" he asked.

Bobby had not thought of it with this definiteness.

When the issue was thus squarely presented to him, his reply of course, was in the negative. But the night got darker and darker; the decoys heavier and heavier; the water colder and colder. Little by little the glory of the day was draining away. Mr. Kincaid, leaning strongly against the punt-pole, watched him for some time in silence.

"Pretty hard work?" he enquired at last.

"Yes, sir," said Bobby miserably.

"Why is it hard?"

Bobby looked up in surprise.

"Because the water is so cold, and the decoys are hard to lift over the edge," he answered presently.

"No; it's not that," said Mr. Kincaid, "It's because you're thinking about how many more there are to do."

Bobby stopped work in the interest of this idea.

"If you're going to be a hunter--or anything else"--went on Mr. Kincaid after a moment, "you're going to have lots of cold work, and hard work and disagreeable work to do--things that you can't finish in a minute, either, but that may last all day--or all the week. And you'll have to do it. If you get to thinking of how long it's going to take, you'll find that you will have a tough time, and that probably it won't be done very well, either. Don't think of how much there is still to do; think of how much you have done. Then it'll surprise you how soon it will be finished."

"Yes, sir," said Bobby.