April io, 1909.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
569 
ice. I felt I just had to get that duck; it was 
my own fault if I did not. I could see he 
was a glossy drake, powerful and wary, and 
would drive himself upward like a bombshell. 
On the other hand, I was cramped up, bundled 
in sweater and coat, my feet higher than my 
body, my eyes blurred from bending forward 
and looking fixedly through the narrow slit in 
the battery. Then I had a piece of luck. The 
resting duck had walked back from the edge 
of the ice so far, that as the tide carried me 
up, a big hummock of ice came between him 
and me. The instant his head was out of 
sight, I stripped off my mittens, gave my gun 
a hitch nearer, shoved the boat forward with 
might and main, until the tide again brought 
me clear of the friendly ice hummock. I could 
see the speckled brown on the drake’s cheeks, 
the bands on his wing coverts, the coral red of 
his feet where he stood on the ice. At the 
same instant his neck darted up to its full 
height, a lightning-like squat, a bound, a flash 
of silver-lined wings. 
Bang! The drake lay breast up on the ice, 
his coral feet paddled once or twice, that was 
all. How good nitro powder smoke smells 
when mixed with the smell of the half-frozen 
river! My heart slowed down to normal. I 
realized my fingers were numb, that there was 
water in the boat in which I had been sitting, 
that my legs were both sound asleep. 
The drake—how heavy he was—was given a 
place of honor in the boat, which I again set 
racing up the shore. A few flakes of snow fell 
and a slight breeze from the southeast carried 
my steaming breath along as fast as I could 
pull. The bare, perpendicular faces of the rocks 
on High Point, the pines and hemlocks and 
cedars above were the only, spots of color in 
the universal gray and white. The flood tide 
was dying; in fact, the ebb was just starting 
around the points close to shore. A lonely 
canvasback duck, diving for' roots and little 
shellfish on the flats, came easily to bag. My 
empty stomach, long denied, warned me it was 
after noon. If I was to get my log and get 
home on this tide every moment must count. 
At the time I did not realize how soon the 
long, black December night would drop its 
heavy curtains or what a task the log repre¬ 
sented. So youth always makes light of every 
obstacle and flies at any adventure as though 
time and strength had no end. What fun to 
be young! 
At a point opposite the log I sent the boat 
full lengt^ out on the ice, then with oar-butt 
and ax, I slowly smashed my way through the 
hundred feet of cove ice to the beach. With 
arms full of drift wood dug from under the 
snow, I soon had a crackling fire, before which 
I ate the lunch my wife had put up for me that 
morning. The dry, half-frozen meat and bread 
tasted as good then as finest roast does at 
home. While I was eating a muskrat came up 
the beach. At a former tide the beach had been 
frozen over with white ice, now several feet 
under the pale yellow water which in turn 
carried a good skim of ice on its surface. Be¬ 
tween these two came the muskrat, the curious 
streaked look of his fur, the rapid strokes of 
his feet all being minutely visible, set off against 
the whiteness of the bottom ice. A charge of 
No. 5, sent down through ice and water added 
him to my collection. 
The log was an old oak, with stump and 
some branches, bare of bark, weather beaten 
and scarred, frayed and split where it had 
battled with rocks and ice. It might have 
come from the Catskills or the Adirondacks. 
Some high tide and northeast storm must have 
driven it ashore there where it had lain no 
one knows how many years. I had seen it 
here, casually, a week before when low tide 
and lack of tools prevented my making any 
attempt to get it. I had been thinking about 
it ever since, for I had seen such old river 
wrought logs and timbers sawn into the most 
lovely colored lumber, having blues, greens, 
grays, and browns, whose exquisite softness 
and shadings no stains or chemicals could hope 
to rival. At best, it would make boards of 
priceless worth; at the worst, building stuff or 
fire wood. I was feverishly eager to see it on 
the saw carriage and possess the boards it 
would make. I had visions of rare picture 
frames, tables, side-boards. 
When I stood beside its mighty girth, I had 
my first misgivings—snow was beginning to 
fall steadily, and outside the ebb was making 
the ice lament. A gull hurried past, almost 
hidden in the snow, the last crows were flap¬ 
ping away toward their roost below South 
Mountain. I shut my eyes and ears to such 
warnings and went at the log. With my ax 
I pushed the snow away and notched off a 
fourteen-foot section of the best of it. I 
wanted more—covetousness wrestling with 
reason. There is no short cut to hard work; 
I steamed and wiped the perspiration from my 
face as the saw slowly sunk into the big log, 
piling a little heap of brown sawdust and saw- 
chips in the fast falling snow. I had to cut 
wedges and pries to hold the ton or two of 
oak in place as I cut—once let that pinch my 
saw and the game was up. 
At last the saw dropped out at the bottom, 
eagerly I pried the log around as far as pos¬ 
sible; the solid brown of the wood gave me 
fresh courage, which I needed to face the 
gathering darkness. The pine tree on the 
steep bank sighed mournfully in the rising 
wind. It was older than I. 
Easily, reluctantly, the old oak rolled into 
the ice and water. With poles I pushed it out 
until it floated, which was all it could do, barely 
two inches of its thirty showing. I had slipped 
a line over one end and drawn it snug. The 
other end of the line I tied to the stern of the 
boat. With a heavy pole cut on shore, I 
poled and broke my way toward the open 
water, working in a desperate hurry. The snow 
was driving past me now. I could hear the 
lisp of whitecaps and the souze of ice floes. 
The shore faded away behind me in the dark¬ 
ness. 
Angry at the ice, smashing it with my heavy 
pole until the water flew, coating the boat and 
me with ice, I at last got clear. The first 
stroke of the oars was too eager. With a jolt 
one of the rowlocks jumped from its icy socket, 
spun in the air and disappeared into the black 
water with a mocking splash. 
“Crippled but not beaten,” I said defiantly 
as I split a stick from the pole with the ax, 
fashioned it to fit the socket with my knife, 
and tied the oar fast. I worked up my collar 
and pulled down my hat to keep out the snow, 
setting myself determinedly to the task of 
towing the big log the five miles home. My 
tow-line was soon as big as my arm with snow 
and slush. I had to knock my oars on the 
gunwale to free them from the rings of ice. 
Somewhere a mile or so down the river a light 
on shore showed dimly. It was so dark in a 
few moments that I could not find the open 
places, having to simply fight my way by 
chance. In my impatience and alarm, savagely 
driving the boat through the ever-present ice, 
I broke my port oar short off just above the 
blade. My heart seemed to stop for a moment 
and my courage went down into the snow 
which half filled the boat. Then I got mad; 
mad at the ice, the pitchy blackness, the cold, 
the endlessly falling snow that covered me and 
lay on the water like a thick quilt, the ice-en¬ 
cumbered oars and oarlocks, the loneliness of it 
all. I pretended my oar was not broken, row¬ 
ing viciously with the stub. I yelled defiance 
at all the ice kings and at everything that 
hindered me. “I’ll show you! I’ll take this 
log home, ice or no ice, tide or no tide!” 
This last was an empty boast, and a clutch¬ 
ing fear told me so—once let the ebb run out, 
and with no ice and good oars, I could not 
have taken that log a hundred yards against 
the rush of the first hours of the flood. The 
wind had gone down; there was silence of 
night, broken only by the sound of my rowing 
and that soft, restless sound of falling snow. 
My oar stub soon gathered enough ice to make 
it a quite effective oar; by striking quickly with 
it, I got on better than I had hoped. At times 
I pulled long distances unhindered, working 
like a machine, hunched up over my oars, then 
again I got into ice and had to work laboriously 
through. At such times my log overtook me, 
gently bumping the stern of the boat, as though 
nudging me to go on. .1 needed no urging, I 
knew the ebb had run for hours already, my 
anxiety had taken form in a feeling that was 
like a big apple core stuck somewhere down 
my throat. I divided the river in sections, 
marked off by the lights that I could see or 
knew I would see on shore. Rowing, I saw 
them go by, one by one, the faithful ebb still 
running. There was a bright light shining from 
the porch windows at Judge Parker’s which 
comforted me. On the dock at Esopus I could 
see the red light for the night steamer, the only 
one still making her trips, and soon afterward 
I made out the two red lights on Esopus 
Island. I felt easier then. Clear of the south 
end of the island it was a short two miles to 
the home beach. Not only that, but on the 
last of the ebb, there was always good open 
water there, it being the full flood that set the 
ice on shore. 
The night steamer made her landing at 
Esopus and swung out and around Pratt’s 
Point, coming swiftly down on me. I watched 
her come with growing apprehension, for it 
began to look as though I was directly in her 
track. Her red and green side lights and white 
bow light were not only exactly the same dis¬ 
tance apart, but the bow light lined up with 
the two high-hung stern lights in a way I could 
not approve of. Since she might shift her 
course any moment, there was no use for me to 
try to dodge her until I saw exactly where she 
was going. I could hear her smash through 
the occasional ice floes, making chips of them 
with her iron-shod bows. I rowed on, watch- 
