"Yes. Fetch him, Curly."
Bobby took the duck from Curly's mouth and held him up by the bill to drain the water, just as he had seen Mr. Kincaid do. Then he laid his prize across the bow and gloated.
It was a very beautiful duck, with an erect topknot of white edged with black running over the top of its head like the plume of a Grecian helmet. The sides of its white breast were covered with feathers of a bright cinnamon tipped with gray; its back was black and gray with fine black edgings; and its wings were dark with a white and iridescent band on each. But what interested Bobby especially was its bill. This differed entirely from the bills of all the other ducks. It was very long and very slender and had teeth!
"What kind is it?" asked Bobby looking up to encounter Mr. Kincaid's amused gaze.
"Well—it's called a merganser in the books," said Mr. Kincaid.
"I'm going to have mama cook it," announced Bobby, and returned to his blissful contemplation.
Mr. Kincaid grinned quietly to himself. He would not spoil the little boy's pleasure by telling him that his first trophy was a fish-duck, and, beautiful as it was, utterly useless.
No more ducks came for a long time after that. The wind continued to increase, blowing from a clear sky, without scuds. By and by Mr. Kincaid produced a package of lunch, and they ate, drinking in turn from the demijohn that Bobby had filled the night before. The sun swung up overhead, and down the westward slope. With the advance of afternoon came more, but scattered, ducks rushing down the wind at railroad speed, to wheel sometimes into the teeth of it like yachts rounding to as they caught sight of the decoys. When the sun was low and red, thousands of blackbirds began to fly by in an unbroken succession, low to the reeds, uttering their chattering and liquid calls. So numerous were they that the entire outlook seemed filled with the crossing lines of their flight, until Bobby's eyes were bewildered, and he could not tell whether he saw blackbirds near at hand or ducks farther away. Whence they had come or whither they were going he could not guess; but that they had some definite objective he could not doubt. Out from the gray distances of the east they appeared; laboured by against the gale; and disappeared into the red distances of the west.
Now the evening flight of ducks was on in earnest, and the warm excitement of decoy-shooting again gripped hard all three occupants of the boat. Over the wide marshes spread the brief crimson of evening. The sun set and dusk came on. It was first indicated, even before a perceptible diminution of daylight, by the vivid flashes from the gun. Then the low western horizon turned to a dark band between sky and water, and the heavens immediately above took on a pale green lucence of infinite depth.
"More wind," said Mr. Kincaid, glancing at it.