246 
ONE DUCK. 
etc., with one corner piled full of decoys. 
There were boats to row in and boxes to 
shoot from, and I felt sure we should have 
a pleasant time, whether we got any ducks 
or not. The weather improved hourly, till 
in the afternoon a well-defined installment 
of the Indian summer that had been de- 
layed somewhere settled down upon the 
scene; this lasted during our stay of two days. 
The river was placid, even glassy, the air 
richly and deeply toned with haze, and the 
sun that of the mellowest October. “ The 
fairer the weather, the fewer the ducks,” 
said Eldridge. “ But this is better than 
ducks,” I thought, and prayed that it might 
last. 
Then there was something pleasing to the 
fancy in being so near to Mount Vernon. 
It formed a sort of rich, historic background 
to our flitting and trivial experiences. Just 
where the, eye of the great Captain would 
perhaps first strike the water as he came 
out in the morning to take a turn up and 
down his long piazza, Ihe Club had for- 
merly had a “ blind,” but the ice of a few 
weeks before our visit had carried it away. 
A little lower down, and in full view from 
his bedroom window, was the place where 
the shooting from the boxes was usually 
done. 
The duck is an early bird, and not much 
given to wandering about in the afternoon; 
hence it was thought not worth while to 
put out the decoys till the next morning. 
We would spend tlie afternoon roaming 
inland in quest of quail, or rabbits, or tur- 
keys (for a brood of the last were known 
to lurk about the woods back there). It 
was a delightful afternoon’s tramp through 
oak woods, pine baxrens, and half-wfild 
fields. We flushed several quail that the 
dog should have pointed, and put a rabbit 
to rout by a well directed broadside, but 
brought no game to camp. We kicked 
about an old bushy clearing, where Eld- 
ridge and Colonel Morehouse had shot a 
wild turkey Thanksgiving Day, but the 
turkey could not be started again. One 
shooting had sufificed for it. We crossed or 
penetrated extensive pine woods that had 
once (perhaps in Washington’s time) been 
cultivated fields ; the mark of the plow was 
still clearly visible. The land had been 
thrown into ridges, after the manner of Eng- 
lish fields, eight or ten feet wide. The 
pines were scrubby, — what are known as the 
loblolly pines, — and from ten to twelve 
inches through at the butt. In a low bot- 
tom among some red cedars, I saw robins 
and several hermit thrushes, besides the yel- 
low-rumped warbler. 
That night, as the sun went down on the 
one hand, the full moon rose up on the 
other; or, as Peck said, the moon showed 
the sun to bed. The river, too, was pres- 
ently brimming with the flood tide. It was 
so still one could have carried a lighted can- 
dle from shore to shore. In a little skiff, we 
floated and paddled up under the shadow 
of Mount Vernon and into the mouth of a 
large creek that flanks it on the left. In 
the profound hush of things, every sound 
on either shore was distinctly heard. A 
large bed of ducks were feeding over on 
the Maryland side, a mile or more away, 
and the noise of so many bills in the water 
sounded deceptively near. Silently we pad- 
died in that direction. When about half a 
mile from them, all sound of feeding sud- 
denly ceased ; then, after a time, as we kept 
on, there was a great clamor of wings, and 
the whole bed appeared to take flight. We 
paused and listened, and presently heard 
them take to the water again, far below and 
beyond us. 
We loaded a boat with the decoys that 
night, and in the morning, on the first sign 
of day, towed a box out in position, and 
anchored it and disposed the decoys about 
it. Two hundred painted wooden ducks, 
each anchored by a small weight that was 
attached by a cord to the breast, bowed and 
sidled and rode the water, and did every- 
thing but feed, in a bed many yards long. 
The shooting-box is a kind of coffin, in 
which the gunner is interred amid the decoys, 
— buried below the surface of the water, 
and invisible, except from a point above 
him. The box has broad canvas wings, that 
unfold and spread out upon the surface of 
the water, four or five feet each way. These 
steady it, and keep the ripples from running 
in when there is a breeze. Iron decoys sit 
upon these wings and upon the edge of the 
box and sink it to the required level, so that 
when everything is completed and the gun- 
ner is in position, from a distance or from 
the shore one sees only a large bed of 
ducks, with the line a little more pronounced 
in the center, where the sportsman lies en- 
tombed, to be quickly resurrected when the 
game appears. He lies there stark and stiff 
upon his back, like a marble effigy upon a 
tomb, his gun by his side, with barely room 
to straighten himself in, and nothing to 
look at but the sky above him. His com- 
panions on shore keep a lookout, and, when 
ducks are seen on the wing, cry out : “ Mark, 
