312 A MEDLEY OF SPORT^ 



and agreed to pay a visit to the fleet with me after lunch 

 to try for wild duck. But surely his Satanic Majesty was 

 on the island that day ? 



" I lay me loife there be a hunnard owd mallard in the 

 gert fleet near the oyster-pits, for I seed 'em this marning 

 when I goed down to the lucern mash to drive in the 

 hosses ! " cried Billy, the bailiff's fourteen-year-old son, 

 whom, by the promise of a shilling, I had decoyed away 

 from the kitchen fire to carry anything we might shoot. 



" Which is the nearest way down to the fleet, my 

 lad ? " I asked of the grinning little marshman as he 

 trudged along between B and myself. 



"Accrost the plank-bridges, maister; foller Oi and 

 yew 'ont go fur wrong." 



Those readers who have visited the east-coast 

 marshes know quite well that a marshman' s " bridge " 

 consists of a narrow plank thrown across the widest of the 

 irrigation dykes or channels, and will be able to realise 

 how unsafe they become when covered with a coating 

 of ice, as were the " bridges " on N Island that event- 

 ful day. More than once my stout friend was within an 

 ace of taking another header into the sedges and duck- 

 weed. 



At length the fleet was reached, and we very soon dis- 

 covered that Tommy's " 'underds o' mallard" had vanished 

 like a dream, and, after very nearly an hour's hard walk- 

 ing along the fleet and pond-holes, our aggregate bag 

 consisted of a pochard, a couple of coot, and a leash of 

 snipe. 



