A mental calculation, and the number was given; then Sandy hobbled off with a matter-of-fact air, as if he were merely bound to the barnyard to slaughter half a dozen chickens. It was just as easy an undertaking, and one infinitely more to his taste. Calling one of the house-boys, he would go with him to the shore, a couple of hundred yards or so distant. Then the couple would walk in single file for some large tree bordering the river. The ducks feeding on the wild celery close to the shore would on their approach swim lazily from the banks out of gun-shot. Sandy would take his position behind the trunk of the tree and lie close. His companion would leisurely walk back to the house. The wild fowl, seeing the cause of their alarm disappear, would slowly circle back, and Sandy, waiting till they were well bunched, would let go both barrels; then, denuding himself of his breeches, he would wade in and bring out his game. The ducks never seemed to “catch on” to this dodge, and Sandy rarely failed to fill his orders, as the drummers say, “with promptness and dispatch.”
There was only one pot-hunter in the neighborhood of Washington thirty years ago—an old, grizzled, weather-beaten man, named Jerry, who anchored his little schooner in a snug cove on our shore every winter, and such was the unfailing supply of wild ducks that Jerry was rarely forced to up-anchor, set his sails and speed farther down the river. Old Jerry was assisted by his son, young Jerry, a chip of the old block. Every Saturday these two would put their game in canvas bags and carry them to their regular customers in Washington.
A KICKER.
I became a fast friend of these two pot-hunters, as much, indeed, as a boy of twelve years could with matured men. I suppose I imbibed from them that overmastering love of sport that has made me a wanderer for a score of years. I was of practical use to them; the sentiment and the benefits were all on my side, for I made the gardener give them regular rations of turnips and cabbages. In return, I was allowed the run of their cabin, a little cuddy at which the meanest, poorest slave on the plantation would have turned up his nose.
THE CURLEW.
Jerry was one of the few pot-hunters who possessed a swivel—a monster ducking gun, with a solid, uncouth stock, fastened to a barrel some ten or twelve feet long, with a bore as large as an old twelve-pounder Napoleon. This “thunderer” was loaded with twenty or twenty-five drachms of powder, and between thirty and forty ounces of shot.
Old Jerry would be in his skiff at the earliest dawn of day, and would cruise from Washington to Alexandria, closely followed by his son and heir, some hundred yards in the rear.
As soon as old Jerry saw a closely bunched flock of ducks, he would lie flat in the bottom of the skiff, and take his creeping paddles, which were about two feet long, two inches wide by a quarter of an inch thick, made of the best hickory, and painted a neutral color. With his arms hanging over the sides of his skiff, and a paddle in each hand, he could make his way evenly along, hardly raising a ripple. As he would approach closer the ducks would get more and more restless, swimming backward and forward, and gazing with alarm at what seemed a log with a queer, indescribable motion on each side. At last, when the woolen cap of a man could be seen, and underneath it the glittering eyes could be detected, then it was that the flock would rise from the water and take wing. That was the moment old Jerry was waiting for, with the stock resting against his shoulder, which was protected by a bag or pillow stuffed tight with feathers to break the recoil, and his eye ranging along the black barrel just as an artilleryman sights his piece before giving the word. A quick jerk of the trigger, the click of the flint striking the pan, the flash of the priming powder, then the deafening roar of the swivel, followed by a flash of flame, an encircling volume of smoke, the swirl of the water as the skiff was rocked by the kicking gun, and the deed was done. Old Jerry would rise up, grasp his double paddle, and make for the shore to reload, while the younger Jerry would come up in hot haste to pick up the dead, and dispatch with his double-barrel the crippled ducks.