250 MELTON AND HOMESPUN 



Notwithstanding the worthy marshman's efforts to 

 render the duck-hole " as clean and comfortable as a 

 little housen," the Doctor inwardly voted his temporary 

 retreat to be " demd damp and unpleasant," and 

 longingly did he watch the eastern horizon and the 

 tokens of dawn. 



From out on the ooze-flats sounded the weird, far- 

 reaching challenge of the curlew and redshank, the 

 plaintive call of the ringed plover and lapwing, while a 

 strange, goat-like bleating at no great distance from the 

 pit told of the presence of a godwit or godwits amongst 

 the deep and muddy runnels which intersected and 

 drained the salts. Every now and again a " swish " of 

 wings overhead betokened the passing of an early team 

 of mallard from their nocturnal feeding-grounds inland 

 to the tideway, and the tingling ears of the waiting 

 gunner were once gladdened by the unmistakable hound- 

 like music of a herd of pink-footed geese in flight. But 

 never so much as the glimpse of a passing fowl did the 

 watcher in that slimy gunning-pit catch. 



Cold and hard was the wild nor'-easter which came 

 howling in from the North Sea to search out every 

 nook and corner of the unsheltered levels, and the 

 thunder of the white-capped coamers breaking upon the 

 sand-bar beyond the ooze-flats told its own tale of a 

 heavy sea running in the fairway. But it is an ill wind 

 that blows good to no man, and, though the solitary 

 gunner in the old duck-hole pulled the collar of his 

 heavy guernsey well up to the chin, he welcomed the 

 brine -charged gale which struck him with such icy 

 force, for would not the fowl flight low in the teeth, 

 of it? 



