Boys of the Old Sea Bed: Tales of Nature and Adventure

by Charles Allen McConnell

To carry the sap home to the big kettles which were kept constantly boiling, reducing the thin sap to syrup, and finally “sugaring off” into the delectable sweet cakes, a yoke of ash was made fitting over the shoulders, with projecting ends. To these ends were attached ropes which were fastened each to a large bucket. These buckets the boys would fill with sap from the trees, and from the farthest point, trudge home a mile through water and melting snow. It was no easy play, and aching backs and limbs severely tested their courage, yet the boys felt amply repaid for it all in the two hundred pounds of cakes of the delicious sweet they thus harvested during the two weeks of the “run.”

By the time the sugar harvest was over, wild ducks had begun to appear, and the lagoons and deep places in the marshes were noisy at night and early morning with their quacking. While most of the wild fowl passed on to their summer home in the lake region of Canada, some of the ducks built their nests and reared their young in the marshes and along the rivers of that section. Among these were the mallards, large, beautiful birds.

The boys had frequently noticed a pair of these ducks at Round Slough in the latter days of their sap gathering, and had planned to hunt for the nest and secure the eggs which they proposed to place for hatching under a hen. Mrs. Thompson had told the boys that she had known the mallards to be domesticated when hatched away from the wild mother, but care had to be taken to keep them confined at migrating-time in the fall, else they would try to follow off their wild cousins as they flew over.

Spring work pressed so heavily that the boys did not get to visit Round Slough until in May, when one bright day came with the coveted vacation. The slough was back from the river perhaps a quarter of a mile. It was several rods in diameter, of great depth, and perfectly round. The banks were high and sloped away from the hole, as well as toward the water. No trees were growing near the edge, but the sides of the rim were covered with “blue-joint” grass already waist high.

The boys approached the slough cautiously. “There they are,” whispered Dauphin. “But see what the old ducks have.” For, sporting in the water, standing on their heads, waving their funny, big feet in the air, and chasing water bugs, were a dozen downy, yellow ducklings.

“Let’s drive them to land and catch them,” said Ed.

So the boys dashed up to the water’s edge and began to throw in sticks and to “shoo.” The father duck flew away, but the mother kept with her babies and paddled to the other side.

“I’ll watch this side and keep up the fuss,” said Rob, “and you boys can run around and catch them in the grass. You see just where they went out.”

“Why, there they are,” called Dauphin, “away over on that side.” And sure enough, there were the mother duck and her babies skirting the bank, in the water again. Time and again the boys chased the little family from the slough, only to lose sight of them entirely “just where they went out.” The boys were separated now on three sides of the slough, when suddenly there was a great splash in the water and a doe came swimming across, making, as the boy thought, straight for Rob. A deer is no mean antagonist, and Rob scrambled out of the way, while the animal went crashing through the bushes.

Over where Dauphin had been there was a great threshing about in the grass, and a boy’s voice shouting, “Help! help! come quick.” Ed and Rob hurried around the slough, and there was Dauphin trying to hold down a young fawn which was making desperate efforts to escape. But for the arrival of the other boys it might have succeeded in tumbling Dauphin into the deep water. The three boys easily handled the little creature, but Rob’s hand bore the imprint of one of its sharp hoofs for many a day.