"Well, we can see enough to assure us that the ice won't break up on the bar to-morrow," said Lund; "but you may get your ice-boats ready at once, for the next thaw, with a north-easter after it, will leave all clear along the ship channel to the harbor's mouth."
There was quite a pleasurable excitement among the stay-at-homes at the tea table, when the incipient breaking up of the ice was declared; for on the proximity of narrow feeding-grounds to the ice-houses depended the hopes of good sport of our adventurers. To be sure they had thus far had nothing to complain of; but the geese killed had been merely "flight" geese, weary with long migration, thin with want of food, and seeking among the treacherous lures only a rest from their long wandering in the safe companionship of their own kind.
Very shortly after supper the whole household retired, but, save the accustomed prayers, which few, either Catholic or Protestant, forget in that still "unsophisticated" land, it is to be feared that the Sabbath was to them little but a literal "day of rest," in its purest physical sense.
Monday morning a glassy look to the snow-crust induced the younger members of the party to use their skates in going to their stands, and as La Salle drew his from his feet to deposit them in his undisturbed stand, his eyes caught, amid the distant ice-spires, the mazy flight of what he took to be a flock of brent, headed in-shore.
Signaling to Davies to get under cover, he sprang into his own stand, and, crouching amid the straw, hastily drew over his black fur cap his linen havelock, and looking well to the priming of his gun, sought the whereabouts of the swift-flying birds.
Unlike the slower Canada geese, these birds seldom fly high above the surface of the water or ice when seeking food; and several times he lost sight of the flock, as it darted around a berg, or swung round the circle of some secluded valley of the ice-field.
"H-r-r-r-r-huk! H-r-r-r-r-huk!" Their barbarous clamor, insufficiently rendered in the foregoing, suddenly sounded close to leeward, and close up against the light north-wester then blowing came the beautiful quarry, their small, black heads and necks showing as glossy as a raven's wing, in contrast with the asheous hue of their wings, and the pure white of other parts of their plumage. With a wild, tumultuous rush, they circled in head-on over the decoys; and it was so quickly done, that they had swept on fifty yards before La Salle could realize that the leader of the flock was heading for Davies, and had no intention of surging around to his lures again.
"It will never do to let them get the first brent," muttered La Salle. "She has a long-range cartridge in, and I'll try them."
Turning on his knees, he raised the ponderous gun until it "lined" the retreating flock, but elevated at least five feet above the birds, now nearly two hundred yards away. The heavy concussion reverberated across the ice, and the fatal cartridge tore through the distant flight, picking out two of the twelve which composed the flock; and some of the shot, as both Davies and Creamer afterwards averred, rattled smartly in among their decoys nearly four hundred yards away. The remaining birds, hurrying away from the dangers behind them, passed within range of Davies and his companion, and left several of their number dead and dying on the ice; but the first brent of the season had fallen to La Salle's gun.
The day was mild and without wind, and as but few birds were flying, La Salle coiled himself down in the sunny corner of his stand, and drawing from his pocket the letter of which we have spoken in the last chapter, gave it a careful and deliberate perusal. As he closed, a smile, strangely expressing contempt, pity, and admiration, curled his lips, as in low but audible tones, as is often the habit of the solitary hunter or fisherman, he communed with his own heart.