This, I thought, is a rare occurrence for a person to witness, and gently reaching out my hand I inserted my thumb and finger into the eye sockets and lifted both into the canoe.
On getting ashore at the next portage I forced open the jaws of the pike, and the whitefish dropped from them. The half that had been inside the pike's mouth was quite decomposed, while the part out in the water was comparatively fresh.
In trying to swallow this fish, which was two-thirds the pike's own length, he had distended his jaws to the utmost, but they only opened enough to reach near the back fin, and here fixing his teeth in savage fury the biter had bitten more than he could eat. He was equally unable to disgorge himself as he was incapable of swallowing, and thus by his greediness he brought on his doom.
Noticing his stomach was in a distended shape caused me to rip it open with my knife, and out tumbled the remains of a smaller whitefish, almost quite digested, which had been swallowed whole and would have measured nearly a foot long.
It was gluttony and not hunger that caused him to reach an untimely end, a moral for greedy little boys.
CHAPTER XXX.
THE BRASS-EYED DUCK.
The whistler, whistle-wing, great head, garrot or brass-eyed is one of the few ducks that, to my knowledge, builds its nest in trees.
The Indians, who are noted for giving appropriate names, call this duck "arrow duck," on account of its quick passage through the air. They fly very swiftly, and it is only an expert gunner that can bring them down in succession.