She pulled her companion into the dark side of an ice-pile.
A shadow had passed over the ice. Now it passed again, and Lucile, looking up, saw a small flock of ducks circling for a pool of water not twenty yards away.
"Wha—what's the idea?" she whispered.
"Boola balls. Maybe we can catch one. They come from the north; not easily scared."
"Can you—"
"Yes, my brother showed me how to handle the boola balls. You whirl them about your head a few times, then you let them go. If the string strikes a duck's neck, it winds all about it; then the duck can't fly."
With eager fingers Marian straightened out the twelve feet of double-strand leather thong.
"There! There! They're down!" whispered Lucile.
"You stay here. If they rise and fly away, call me."
Creeping around two piles of ice, Marian threw herself flat and began to crawl the remaining distance across a flat pan of ice. Her heart was beating wildly, for in her veins there flowed a strain of the hunter's blood of her Briton ancestors of many generations back.