252 
‘WALDEN. 
If I endeavored to overtake him in a boat, in order to 
see how he would manoeuvre, he would dive and be 
completely lost, so that I did not discover him again, 
sometimes, till the latter part of the day. But I was 
more than a match for him on the surface. He corn- 
monly went off in a rain. 
As I was paddling along the north shore one very 
calm October afternoon, for such days especially they 
settle on to the lakes, like the milkweed down, having 
looked in vain over the pond for a loon, suddenly one, 
sailing out from the shore toward the middle a few rods 
in front of me, set up his wild laugh and betrayed him¬ 
self. I pursued with a paddle and he dived, but when 
he came up I was nearer than before. He dived again, 
but I miscalculated the direction he would take, and we 
were fifty rods apart when he came to the surface this 
time, for I had helped to widen the interval; and again 
he laughed long and loud, and with more reason than 
before. He manoeuvred so cunningly that I could not 
get within half a dozen rods of him. Each time, when 
he came to the surface, turning his head this way and 
that, he coolly surveyed the water and the land, and ap¬ 
parently chose his course so that he might come up 
where there was the widest expanse of water and at 
the greatest distance from the boat. It was surprising 
how quickly he made up his mind and put his resolve 
into execution. He led me at once to the widest part 
of the pond, and could not be driven from it. While he 
was thinking one thing in his brain, I was endeavoring 
to divine his thought in mine. It was a pretty game, 
played on the smooth surface of the pond, a man against 
a loon. Suddenly your adversary's checker disappears 
beneath the board, and the problem is to place yours 
