“I can’t talk and work too; but I’ll tell you one to-night, after we’ve done work, and when we go gunning, and are waiting for birds. Work when you work, and play when you play; that’s my fashion.”
When the time arrived, John reminded Uncle Isaac of his promise.
“Well, John, where do you want to go? into the woods, or after sea-fowl?”
“I’ll tell you what I want to do, above all things; but perhaps you wouldn’t; I want you to learn me to shoot flying. I can shoot very well now at a dead mark; but I never, in all my life, shot anything flying.”
“You’ll never be much of a gunner till you can, because there’s ten chances to shoot flying or running game where there is one to shoot that which is still. Take a fox, for instance; ’tain’t one time to a hundred you can shoot one, except on the clean jump, going twelve or fifteen foot at a leap, and looking just like a little streak. All these sea-fowl fly out of the bays every night. Now, there’s a place between Smutty Nose and the Sow and Pigs, not more than half a gun-shot in width, which they fly through about sunrise, when they come into the bay. I’ve gone there before sunrise, with three guns, and killed over a hundred; been back by the middle of the forenoon, got my breakfast, and, by working a little later, done a good day’s work. What d’ye think of that, Johnny?”
“O!” cried John, his eyes flashing, “I shouldn’t want to live any longer, if I could do that.”
“There’s a good many other places where they fly through; for it’s the nature of them to follow the land. They used to fly through between Elm Island and the outer ledges, but I expect Ben has pretty much put an end to that; besides, if you have two guns, or a double barrel, it gives you two chances—you can fire at them in the water, and when they rise give it to them again.”
“I know it; I’ve seen you and Ben shoot wild geese when they were flying over. Ben burnt mother awfully with a wild goose.”
“How could that be?”
“Well, mother was frying fish in the Dutch oven; Ben fired into a flock that was flying over the house, and down came an old gander, right down chimney, and flung the fat all over her face.”