242 THE SWAN AND HER CREW. 



Dick had been spending the evening at Mr. Merivale's, and 

 just as he was leaving the house, the bright tongue of flame on 

 the opposite side of the broad alarmed him, and Mary insisted 

 upon coming with him to see what mischief her brother had been 

 perpetrating. 



They rowed back, followed by the fitful glare of the fire, 

 which shone in their eddying wake, amid the clamour of wild- 

 fowl startled into flight by the unusual apparition. Then as 

 Mary was silently admiring the strange weird scene, there was 

 a blinding flash, followed by two loud reports, which made her 

 start and scream, and then two splashes in the water, as two 

 ducks out of a number which had been passing over the boats 

 fell to the aim of Frank and Jimmy. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 



Punt-shooting on Breydon. A Narrow Escape. 



THE Christmas holidays had commenced for the boys. Frank 

 had a consultation with Bell, which ended in Bell's borrowing 

 a duck-shooting punt from a neighbour, and Dick's looking up 

 the big duck-gun from his father's lumber-room. The punt 

 was a flat-bottomed one, pointed at both ends and covered fore 

 and aft, so as to form two watertight compartments. In the 

 bows was a rest for the gun to lie upon. As the gun took a 

 pound of shot at a load, Frank was rather nervous about firing 

 it off, for the recoil, if not broken by mechanical appliances, 

 would have dislocated his shoulder. So he bought some india- 

 rubber door-springs, and with them constructed an apparatus 

 to take off the recoil of the gun, and, lest it should by any 

 chance hit his shoulder, he got Mary to make a stout cushion, 

 which he fixed to the butt. 



Reports came that Breydon Water was swarming with wild- 





