Now she was forty feet away, now twenty, now ten, and the ducks had not flown. Stretching out the thong, she rose on an elbow and set the balls whirling over her head. Once, twice, three times, then up she sprang and with one more whirl sent the string singing through the air.
The young ducks, craning their necks with curiosity, did not move until something came crashing at them, and a wildly frantic girl sprang toward them.
To the duck about whose neck the string had encircled, this move was too late, for Marian was upon him. And a moment later, looking very much like the old woman who went to market, with a dead gray duck dangling from her right arm, Marian returned in triumph.
"Oh, Lucile," she cried, "I got him! I got him!"
"Fine! You shall have a medal," said Lucile.
"But how will we cook him?"
"Well," said Lucile, after a moment's thought, "it's growing colder; going to freeze hard. They say freezing meat is almost as good as cooking it. I don't know—"
"Look!" cried Marian suddenly, balancing herself at the crest of a high pile of ice. "What's all that black a little way over there to the left? It's not like ice. Do you suppose it could be an island?"
"Is the ice piling there?" Lucile asked, clinging to her friend's side. "No, it isn't, so it can't be an island, for the island would stop the ice as it flows and make it pile up."
"But what can it be?"