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“Ready!”

Again the four reports that sounded as two; and they are past; no longer a regular formation, but scattered erratically by the alarm, individual vanishing and dissolving dots, speedily swallowed up by the gray of the mist.

But this time there was no echoing splash, as a hurtling body struck the water, nor tense spoken word of congratulation following–nothing. For ten seconds, which is long under the circumstances, not a word is spoken; only the metallic click of opened locks, as they spring home, breaks the steady purr of the wind; then:

“Safe from me when they come like that,” admits Sandford, “unless I have a ten-foot pole, and they happen to run into it.”

“And from me,” I echo.

“Lord, how they come! They just simply materialize before your eyes, like an impression by flash-light; and then–vanish.”

“Yes.”

“Seems as though they’d take fire, like meteorites, from the friction.”

“I’m looking for the smoke, myself–Down! Mark your left!”

Pat! pat! pat! Swifter than spoken words, swift as the strokes of an electric fan, the wings beat the air. Swish-h-h! long-drawn out, crescendo, yet crescendo as, razor-keen, irresistible, those same invisible wings cut it through and through; while, answering the primitive challenge, responding to the stimulus of the game, the hot tingle of excitement speeds up and down our spines. Nearer, nearer, mounting, perpendicular–

The third battalion of that seemingly inexhaustible army has come and gone; and, mechanically, we are thrusting fresh shells into the faintly smoking gun-barrels.

“Got mine that time, both of them.” No repression, nor polite self-abnegation from Sandford this time; just plain, frank exultation and pride of achievement. “Led ’em a yard–two, maybe; but I got ’em clean. Did you see?”

“Yes, good work,” I echo in the formula.

“Canvas-backs, every one; nothing but canvas-backs.” Again the old marvel, the old palliation that makes the seemingly unequal game fair. “But, Lord, how they do go; how anything alive can go so–and be stopped!”

“Mark to windward! Straight ahead! Down!”

CHAPTER IX–OBLIVION

This, the morning. Then, almost before we mark the change, swift-passing time has moved on; the lowering mist has lifted; the occasional pattering rain-drops have ceased; the wind, in sympathy, is diminished. And of a sudden, arousing us to a consciousness of time and place, the sun peeps forth through a rift in the scattering clouds, and at a point a bit south of the zenith.

“Noon!” comments Sandford, intensely surprised. Somehow, we are always astonished that noon should follow so swiftly upon sunrise. “Well, who would have thought it!”

That instant I am conscious, for the first time, of a certain violent aching void making insistent demand.

“I wouldn’t have done so before, but now that you mention it, I do think it emphatically.” This is a pitiful effort at a jest, but it passes unpunished. “There comes Johnson to bring in the birds.”

After dinner–and oh, what a dinner! for, having adequate time to do it justice, we drag it on and on, until even Aunt Martha is satisfied–we curl up in the sunshine, undimmed and gloriously warm; we light our briers, and, too lazily, nervelessly content to even talk, lay looking out over the blue water that melts and merges in the distance with the bluer sky above. After a bit, our pipes burn dead and our eyelids drop, and with a last memory of sunlight dancing on a myriad tiny wavelets, and a blessed peace and abandon soaking into our very souls we doze, then sleep, sleep as we never sleep in the city; as we had fancied a short day before never to sleep again; dreamlessly, childishly, as Mother Nature intended her children to sleep.

Then, from without the pale of utter oblivion, a familiar voice breaks slowly upon our consciousness: the voice of Johnson, the vigilant.

“Got your blind all built, boys, and the decoys is out–four dozen of them,” he admonishes, sympathetically. “Days are getting short, now, so you’d better move lively, if you get your limit before dark.”