50 WILD-FOWL AND SEA-FOWL OF GREAT BRITAIN 



left, the landlord called Baulk back and whispered, 

 " Let Splashey have a good pitch, fur he is most 

 oncommon high an' mighty." Splashey was a good 

 customer at the Royal George, hence the landlord's 

 solicitude. Down the street, along the quay, with 

 its snow-patched craft riding at anchor on the dark 

 water, just on the turn of ebb, over one marsh, then 

 the uplands, on and on, and at last Chetney Marshes, 

 and the tide at low ebb, and the fowl. Those of our 

 readers who may have fowled on the tide there will, 

 I think, bear me out in my statement that for hen- 

 footed fowl — the waders — the place was hard to beat, 

 at the same time it was a dangerous one. Mobs of 

 Curlew^s, clouds of Dunlins and other birds mixed 

 with them, and the Saddle-backed Cobs, the Black- 

 backed Gulls, were continually beating up and down, 

 well out of gun-shot, on the look-out for crippled 

 fowl. When the tide is dead out, cuts and gripes 

 remain, that may be crossed ; for the. bottom is in all 

 of them paved with broken shells and stones, but 

 only in certain places where they drain at the mouth 

 of their inlets into the tide at its lowest ebb. All 

 round and above these cuts long tongues of sand, 

 shinele, and mud run in all directions down to the 

 tide. 



Just off these spits, well within gun-shot, the fowl 

 flight by in thousands. The tide ebbs and flows 

 here with startling rapidity. The to all appearance 

 solid spits of sand, directly the tide turns — although 

 it is still at some distance — begin to ooze up and 

 bubble; you can see it shift about your feet. If 



