“Well,” said Barr, as his partner sprang over the rail and motioned to Enoch to lend a hand in hauling his canoe aboard, “how is everything in the river?”
“Everything is all right,” was the encouraging response. “The bed is still there, but the wind is changing, and as soon as the fog begins to lift and the tide to turn, they’ll be off.”
“Not all of ’em, I reckon,” answered Barr, with a laugh. “Seen anything of the Magpie?”
Pete replied that he had seen her go toward Havre de Grace about eleven o’clock that morning; and then Barr went on to tell how the officers had searched his cabin and ground for the big gun he was to use that night, interlarding his sentences with so many frightful imprecations and threats against the boys who had been the cause of all his trouble, that Lester shuddered while he listened. Still he wished it had been Don Gordon, instead of Gus Egan, who had incurred the duck-shooter’s enmity.
“I shouldn’t care much what happened to him, so long as he wasn’t hurt,” thought Lester. “I simply wish that his path and mine might never cross each other again. I can’t bear the sight of him. I don’t want to see him strutting around with those silver leaves on his shoulders, while I haven’t so much as a corporal’s stripes to be happy over.”
As soon as Pete’s canoe had been hauled aboard, the sloop filled away on her course. She had but a short distance farther to run, and at the end of another half hour the sails were quietly lowered, and the preparations for the coming slaughter were quickly completed. Barr’s canoe was put into the water, the big gun lowered into it, and then the duck-shooter stretched himself out flat on the bottom, and with a short paddle, somewhat resembling a pudding-stick, in each hand, moved silently away into the darkness.
“I don’t see any ducks,” whispered Lester, after he had tried in vain to locate the flock.
“Neither do I; neither does Barr, yet,” replied Enoch. “But they are out there somewhere. Now keep perfectly still, and stand by to lend a hand with the sails the minute you hear the gun speak. After the ducks are killed, we can’t pick them up and get away from here any too quick.”
“Why not?” asked Lester, who was trembling with excitement.
“How do we know but there may be a police-boat within hailing distance of us?” asked Enoch, in reply. “If there is, she will come at us like a hawk at a June bug, and we want to hold ourselves in readiness to run.”