“Nothing better, I have never been duck-hunting myself, but they say it is capital fun; there are three or four fellows of ‘ours’ who always get leave in the duck season, and pass a month or two on the islands of the Baltic; they say it is first-rate sport—I vote we go.”
And so it was settled, and the details of the expedition were arranged as they walked up those sandy deserts of streets which they had traversed on the first night of their landing.
Marie received them with smiles, and when she learnt the object of their sport, so worked on the Captain’s susceptible heart, that he vowed she should have every feather that fell to his gun. The Parson was rather affected to Lota, but Torkel, who had been a little stung by Tom’s joke, magnanimously transferred the offer to Marie, who, “poor thing, might perhaps want the down, and Lota would not know what to do with it, she had a great deal more than she could make up already;” which, considering his own fame as a hunter, as well as that of young Svensen, between whom Miss Lota had been coquetting (so Tom averred) till she ought to have been ashamed of herself, was not unlikely to be literally true.
It must be remarked that this is the sporting way of collecting eider down. The business way is robbing the nests, which is done in spring, and is very slow work—though sufficiently dangerous.
CHAPTER XV.
EIDER DUCK HUNTING.
“For now in our trim boats of Norroway deal
We must dance on the waves with the porpoise and seal;—
The breeze it shall pipe, so it pipe not too high,
And the gull be our songstress whene’er she flits by;—