360 DUCK SHOOTING. 



swifter than the wind itself came riding down the last 

 beams of the sinking sun. Above them the air was dot- 

 ted with long, wedge-shaped masses or converging 

 strings, more slowly moving than the ducks, from which 

 I could soon hear the deep, mellow honk of the goose 

 and the clamorous cackle of the brant. And through 

 all this were darting here and there and everywhere, 

 ducks, single, in pairs and small bunches. English 

 snipe were pitching about in their erratic flight ; plover 

 drifted by with their tender whistle, little alarmed by 

 the cannonade ; blue herons, bitterns and snowy egrets, 

 with long necks doubled up and legs outstretched be- 

 hind, flapped solemnly across the stage, while yellow- 

 legs, sand snipe, mud hens, divers — I know not what 

 all — chinked in the vacant places. 



When I shot the last one of the two teal ducks in- 

 stead of his leader, I thought that I had discovered the 

 art of missing, and fondly imagined that the skill I had 

 acquired by shooting in brush would now show my 

 friend Everett something worthy of his notice. How 

 the bright bloom of that youthful conceit wilted under 

 the fire that now consumed my internal economy ! The 

 nerves that felt but a slight tremor when the ruffed 

 grouse burst roaring from the thicket, now quaked like 

 aspens beneath the storm that swept over me from 

 every point of the compass. There I stood, the con- 

 verging point of innumerable dark lines, bunches and 

 strings, all rushing toward me, at different rates of 

 speed, indeed, but even the slowest fearfully fast. 

 There I stood bothering with a muzzle-loader, loading 



