n8 The Wild-Fowlers 



the very picture of a sailor cook as he 

 stood butter-knife in hand and aproned 

 to his very feet in the cabinway, calling 

 to his father : 



" Com* in, dad; th' bre'kfas' be ready, 

 an* th' genelmens is up/' 



And they were washed and combed and 

 dressed, too each of them in true duck- 

 ing apparel, the doctors both in rubber 

 boots, gray canvas coats, and corduroy 

 caps and trousers, and Seth snugly ar- 

 rayed in high, heavy tan shoes, a grayish 

 dog-skin jacket, a woollen pull-down 

 headgear of the same shade, and rubber, 

 silk-lined gloves. 



Gray is the correct color for battery 

 work, just as light brown or dead-grass 

 shade is the proper thing for full-season 

 upland shooting, or in the late autumn 

 play in the brown marshes for jack snipe 

 and in the salt-meadow blind and sandbar 

 pit for bay birds, and no one knew these 

 important details better than our three 

 good friends aboard the Coot. 



