168 ‘COME DUCK SHOOTING WITH ME’”’ 
would turn and sweep behind us, alighting at the old 
stand as soon as we had passed. There were curlews, 
godwits, willets, beetle-heads, turnstones, a very few 
winter yellowlegs, with sanderlings and peeps in un- 
imaginable flocks. With decoys and a blind, a single 
shooter could fill a wagon with them in a few hours. 
But what was the use? Wecould do nothing with them. 
The Captain said that no one ever shot these ‘‘ blooming 
little dicky birds,’’ but I confess I wanted to. 
More than once I was tempted to seize my “‘sixteen”’ 
and take up the challenge that some wily old beetle- 
head plover was sending over his shoulder, as he circled 
a hundred yards away. Perhaps they were old ac- 
quaintances, possibly they were some of the same jaunty 
rascals that had fought shy of my decoys in past seasons 
on the sand beaches of Cape Cod. I didn’t shoot, but 
I whistled the plover call until the beetle-heads present 
held a convention to consider who the wayward brother 
might be who was making all the racket. 
It was a beautiful morning. We were homeward 
bound. The Captain was asleep in the shade of the sail. 
Tom sat in the bow, dangling his feet in the water, softly 
singing to himself, 
‘“De whale am de eatenest fish in de sea, 
He swallered down Jonah and he’d swaller down me, 
De whale ain’t much good dat I can see 
’Cept swaller down Jonah, den swaller down me,”’ 
but ready instantly to push off if our craft touched on 
any one of the numerous sandbars. The tiny waves 
rippled in the sunlight. A few score white herring gulls 
were hovering over and diving into a school of small 
fish, intent on getting breakfast. The surf boomed 
