GEESE 



in, but soon after I lay down they began 

 returning. First there came a pair of sprigs, 

 then a pair of black ducks. The black mal- 

 lard is my favorite he is so wary, so wise, and 

 so game. He can look into the neck of a jug, 

 and he fights to the last. When the hen 

 dropped, the drake, as usual, flared vertically. 

 Upward he leaped in that exhibition of furious 

 aerial gymnastics peculiar to his breed; then, 

 at the top of his climb, he seemed to hang 

 motionless for the briefest interval. That is 

 the psychological instant at which to nail a 

 black duck. As he came down, fighting, I 

 was up and overboard after him. The water 

 was shallow, but I splashed like a stern- 

 wheeler, and I was wet to the waist before I 

 had retrieved that cripple. 



Next I glimpsed a long, low line of waving 

 wings approaching, and flattened myself to the 

 thickness of a flannel cake, thrilling in every 

 nerve. Never did twenty geese head in more 

 prettily. They had started to set their pin- 

 ions, and I was picking my shots, when one of 

 the decoys, a young gander in the Boy Scout 

 class, cracked under the nervous strain and 

 began to flap madly. He flared the incomers, 

 and I failed to get more than two. 

 3 27 



