“All right,” says I. “I’m both willin’ and hungry.”
So we went ashore. I’ve told you how the river curved and wriggled. Folks tell me it twists five miles through the country to make one mile ahead. I don’t know how near right this is, but it didn’t seem to us like any exaggeration when we were floating down. Well, what I meant to say was that when we were on the point we could see up-stream only about a thousand feet, and down-stream not so far as that. It was just like being on the shore of a tiny lake, except that the current kept swishing by so fast.
“Haul the canoe up on the s-sand,” says Mark, “so the current won’t carry it off.”
It was on the lower side of the point, and I pulled it up till its nose was sticking into the underbrush.
“Hush!” says Mark. “Look!”
It startled me, but there was nothing to be afraid of. It was just a big crane flopping his wings and coming down to the water about a hundred feet off.
“G-goin’ fishin’,” Mark whispered.
The crane lighted in the water about to his knees and stood as quiet as a gate-post, waiting for a fish to swim by where he could grab him in his long bill.
While we watched him another crane came settling down not fifty feet from the first one and stood up as straight and stiff as a soldier. He hardly got placed when three more came down and got into the water up-stream farther toward the bend. That made five.
“Whee!” I whispered to Mark, “I never saw so many together before.”