“Well, that’s ’bout all we had to do. We got boarders enough from that ridic’lous advertisement to fill every spare room we had, includin’ Jonadab’s and mine. Me and the cap’n had to bunk in the barn loft; but there was some satisfaction in that—it give us an excuse to git away from the ‘sports’ in the smokin’ room.
“The Todds was part of the haul. He was a little, dried-up man, single, and a minister. Nigh’s I could find out, he’d given up preachin’ by the request of the doctor and his last congregation. He had a notion that he was a mighty hunter afore the Lord, like Nimrod in the Bible, and he’d come to the Old Home to bag a few gross of geese and ducks.
“His sister was an old maid, and slim, neither of which failin’s was from ch’ice, I cal’late. She wore eyeglasses and a veil to ‘preserve her complexion,’ and her idee seemed to be that native Cape Codders lived in trees and et cocoanuts. She called ’em barbarians, utter barbarians.’ Whenever she piped ‘James!’ her brother had to drop everything and report on deck. She was skipper of the Todd craft.
“Well, them Todds was what Peter T. called ‘the limit, and a chip or two over.’ The other would-be gunners and fishermen were satisfied to slam shot after sandpeeps, or hook a stray sculpin or a hake. But t’wa’n’t so with brother James Todd and sister Clarissa. ‘Ducks’ it was in the advertisin’, and nothin’ but ducks they wanted. Clarissa, she commenced to hint middlin’ p’inted concernin’ fraud.
“Fin’lly we lost patience, and Peter T., he said they’d got to be quieted somehow, or he’d do some shootin’ on his own hook; said too much Toddy was givin’ him the ‘D.T.’s.’ Then I suggested takin’ ’em down the beach somewheres on the chance of seein’ a stray coot or loon or somethin’—anything that could be shot at. Jonadab and Peter agreed ’twas a good plan, and we matched to see who’d be guide. And I got stuck, of course; my luck again.
“So the next mornin’ we started, me and the Reverend James and Clarissa, in the Greased Lightnin’. Fust part of the trip that Todd man done nothin’ but ask questions about the launch; I had to show him how to start it and steer it, and the land knows what all. Clarissa set around doin’ the heavy contemptuous and turnin’ up her nose at creation gin’rally. It must have its drawbacks, this roostin’ so fur above the common flock; seems to me I’d be thinkin’ all the time of the bump that was due me if I got shoved off the perch.
“Well, by and by Lonesome Huckleberries’ shanty hove in sight, and I was glad to see it, although I had to answer a million more questions about Lonesome and his history. When we struck the beach, Clarissa, she took her paint box and umbrella and moskeeter ’intment, and the rest of her cargo, and went off by herself to ‘sketch.’ She was great on ’sketchin’,’ and the way she’d use up good paint and spile nice clean paper was a sinful waste. Afore she went, she give me three fathom of sailin’ orders concernin’ takin’ care of ‘James.’ You’d think he was about four year old; made me feel like a hired nuss.
“Well, James and me went perusin’ up and down that beach in the blazin’ sun lookin’ for somethin’ to shoot. We went ’way beyond Lonesome’s shanty, but there wa’n’t nobody to home. Lonesome himself, it turned out afterward, was up to the village with his horse and wagon, and his daughter Becky was over in the woods on the mainland berryin’. Todd was a cheerful talker, but limited. His favorite remark was: ‘Oh, I say, my deah man.’ That’s what he kept callin’ me, ‘my deah man.’ Now, my name ain’t exactly a Claude de Montmorency for prettiness, but ‘Barzilla’ ’ll fetch me alongside a good deal quicker’n ‘my deah man,’ I’ll tell you that.
“We frogged it up and down all the forenoon, but didn’t git a shot at nothin’ but one stray ‘squawk’ that had come over from the Cedar Swamp. I told James ’twas a canvasback, and he blazed away at it, but missed it by three fathom, as might have been expected.
“Fin’lly my game leg—rheumatiz, you understand—begun to give out. So I flops down in the shade of a sand bank to rest, and the reverend goes pokin’ off by himself.