WILDFOWLING AFLOAT 85 



as smooth as the proverbial mill-pond, the white-crested 

 rollers of the North Sea broke with a sound like thunder 

 upon Shellness Point. 



To the south of our anchorage lay a wide expanse of 

 saltings and dyke -intersected marshes. It was amongst 

 those wind-swept levels that " A Son of the Marshes " 

 spent the early years of his all too short life, and on 

 this wild night, as my sailing companion and I sat 

 reading his " Drift from the Foreshore " before our 

 glowing cabin-stove, the weird cry of the curlew, 

 the hoarse honkings of wild geese, the merry cackle 

 of the mallard, and the shrill "whe-oh" of the pigeon 

 came to us above the roaring of the gale, just as did 

 that fowl-music to the ears of the dead naturalist 

 and his marshland companions winters and winters 

 ago. 



As the cabin clock was striking the hour of seven 

 next morning, I was awakened by the stentorian voice 

 of M. bidding me, as a sluggard, " Turn out," or be 

 hanged. Now, the deck of a small yacht on a bitterly 

 cold morning does not bear a particularly comfortable 

 appearance. I crawled out of my bunk, however, and 

 into my clothes, took a long and wistful look at the glow- 

 ing coals in the stove, and blundered on deck, to find 

 that, although the gale had almost blown itself out, the 

 sails and rigging were stiff with frost. The skipper, 

 from whose tip -tilted and rubicund nose was gracefully 

 suspended an ethereal dew-drop (he is never without one 

 during cold weather), shovelled away the snow from the 



