BREYDON IN SPRINGTIME 



81 



mudflats ; and, helped by a steady breeze from the south-east 

 the most favourable of all for seeing the spring migrants 

 on the move away we go, bowling along right merrily. 



Our punt is a double-ended boat, decked on the "fore- 

 peak," a rail runs round the "well" in which we sit to row, 

 and there is a short decked-in portion astern. On either 

 side are lockers for sundry naturalistic stores cord, wadding, 

 specimen tins, with a bottle of formalin, and a shelf for the 

 binoculars handy, for one never knows what he may meet 

 with. Eighteen feet over all, with a beam of nearly four feet 

 at its widest, the flat-bottomed punt is just the vessel for 



A BREYDON GUN-PUNT 



exploring creek, flat, and salting. The rower sits on a box 

 seat, and whoever adds himself to the crew sits on a low seat 

 astern. When the small tanned sail goes up the stump of a 

 mast the skipper sits aft, holding sheet and tiller, and the 

 additional " hand " must sit squat on a cushion on the floor, 

 with his back to the mast. Alone, the skipper crowds on all 

 sail, and flies along with mast at half a right angle, to the great 

 wonderment of the gaping saddle-backed gulls, wakened 

 from their doze by the side of the channel, and putting up 

 the gaunt herons that are abstractedly fishing at the entrances 

 of the creeks, or " runs," that here and there branch from the 

 main " drain," to lose themselves among the flats. The 

 G 



