The long gleaming sweep of the Broadwater Bay, stretching from the tip of the Cape Charles peninsula to the mouth of the Delaware, was literally alive with ducks.
Bivens had put him in command of the little schooner and he gave orders at once to lower a tender and tow her to an old anchorage he knew in a little cove behind Gull Marsh.
And then his trouble began with Bivens.
Stuart rushed to his stateroom and described the prospects of a great day in the blinds with boyish enthusiasm. It didn't move Bivens, except to rage.
"Let 'em fly if they want to, I'm not going to budge. Go yourself, Jim."
Stuart was furious, and began to talk to Bivens as if he were a schoolboy.
"Go myself!" he cried with rage. "What do you suppose I gave up my work and came down here a month for?"
"To shoot ducks, of course," the financier answered, politely.
"I came to try to teach you how to live, you fool, and I'm not going without you. Get into your togs! The guides are here and ready. The tide waits for no man, not even a millionaire; it's ebbing now."
"Well, let it ebb, I don't want to stop it!" the sick man snarled.