LOON 6 



but when he came up I was nearer than before. He 

 dived again, but I miscalculated the direction he would 

 take, and we were fifty rods apart when he came up, 

 and again he laughed long and loud. He managed very 

 cunningly, and I could not get within half a dozen rods 

 of him. Sometimes he would come up unexpectedly on 

 the opposite side of me, as if he had passed directly 

 under the boat. So long-winded was he, so unweariable, 

 that he would immediately plunge again, and then no 

 wit could divine where in the deep pond, beneath the 

 smooth surface, he might be speeding his way like a fish, 

 perchance passing under the boat. He had time and 

 ability to visit the bottom of the pond in its deepest 

 part. A newspaper authority says a fisherman — giv- 

 ing his name — has caught loon in Seneca Lake, N. Y., 

 eighty feet beneath the surface, with hooks set for trout. 

 Miss Cooper ^ has said the same. Yet he appeared to 

 know his course as surely under water as on the surface, 

 and swam much faster there than he sailed on the sur- 

 face. It was surprising how serenely he sailed off with 

 unrufled bosom when he came to the surface. It was as 

 well for me to rest on my oars and await his reappear- 

 ing as to endeavor to calculate where he would come up. 

 When I was straining my eyes over the surface, I would 

 suddenly be startled by his unearthly laugh behind me. 

 But why, after displaying so much cunning, did he be- 

 tray himself the moment he came to the surface with that 

 loud laugh? His white breast enough betrayed him. 

 He was indeed a silly loon, I thought. Though he took 

 all this pains to avoid me, he never failed to give notice 

 ^ [Susan Fenimore Cooper, Rural Hours, p. 10.] 



