The one with the blue eye was right.
The wind was from the northeast in earnest, and the tide racing in. Half a mile outward a dozen long puntlike scows, loaded to their brims with sand, were being borne on the swirling current up the river's channel, each guided at the stern by a ragged dot of a figure straining at an oar.
As I struck out across the desolate waste of mud, bound for the point of dry marsh, the figure steering the last scow, as he passed, waved a warning to me. With the incoming sweep of tide the sunlight faded, the bay became noisy with the cries of sea-fowl, and the lighthouse beyond the river's channel stood out against the ominous green sky like a stick of school-chalk.
I jerked my cap tighter over my ears, and lowering my head to the wind kept on. I had barely time to make the marsh. Over the black desolate waste of clay-mud the sea was spreading its hands—long, dangerous hands, with fingers that every moment shot out longer and nearer my tracks. The wind blew in howling gusts now, straight in from the open sea. Days like these the ducks have no alternative but the bay. Only a black diver can stand the strain outside. Tough old pirates these—diving to keep warm.
I kept on, foolish as it was. A flight of becassines were whirled past me, twittering in a panic as they fought their way out of sudden squalls. I turned to look back. Already my sunken tracks were obliterated under a glaze of water, but I felt I was safe, for I had gained harder ground. It was a relief to slide to the bottom of one of the labyrinth of causeways that drain the marsh, and plunge on sheltered from the wind.
Presently I heard ducks quacking ahead. I raised my head cautiously to the level of the wire-grass. A hundred rods beyond, nine black ducks were grouped near the edge of a circular pool; behind them, from where I stood, there rose from the level waste a humplike mound. I could no longer proceed along the bottom of the causeway, as it was being rapidly filled to within an inch below my boot-tops. The hump was my only salvation, so I crawled to the bank and started to stalk the nine black ducks.
It was difficult to keep on my feet on the slimy mud-bank, for the wind, true to the fishermen's prediction, was now blowing half a gale. Besides, this portion of the marsh was strange to me, as I had only seen it at a distance from the lower end of the bay, where I generally shot. I was within range of the ducks now, and had raised my hammers—I still shoot a hammer-gun—when a human voice rang out. Then, like some weird jack-in-the-box, there popped out from the mound a straight, long-waisted body in black waving its arms.
It was the curé!