MALLARD DUCK (ANAS BOSCHAS).
We started from the Place d’Armes, and when we reached “the Cross,” at Hochelega, held a council of war about loading the gun, as a scared squirrel had just darted under a fence and roused our thirst for blood. Opinions conflicted as to whether the powder or shot should be put in first, as one dogmatic adventurer, whose experience in squibs and fire-crackers entitled him to respect, declared with the positiveness of error that the shot should have the preference. Better reasoning, however, prevailed, and to make assurance doubly sure, down went a double charge of powder. “It’s not near full yet,” sneered young Dogmatism. I hoped not; but to make assurance trebly sure, up came the flask again and down went more powder. I remember one of the group, whose characteristic caution provoked us throughout the trip, suggested mounting the gun in an embrasure in the fence, laying a train of powder to the nipple, and testing its safety at discreet distance; but there was a display of fear in the proposal that we, as of Saxon blood, could never countenance, and so we strangled it at birth. It is a memorable fact, that may go some way to sustain the belief that I have mentioned above, that, as if prompted by instinct, the gun refused to go off on several occasions, in spite of repeated cleanings of the nipple, coaxing with grains of powder and fresh caps. We were unable to “distill the soul of goodness” in this apparently evil and obdurate circumstance; so the charge was withdrawn, the barrel cleaned, and to make assurance quadruply sure, the powder was poured down with even more liberality than before.
The third day we reached the upper end of Ste. Anne’s, near the old French fort. At that time the village was even a quieter spot than now, where never a speculator had looked with greed upon the soil; its greatest stir made by the visits and voices of the boisterous voyageurs; its rapids sacred to the memory of the poet Moore, and the soft refrain of his “Canadian Boat Song.” Moreover, its surroundings made it a perfect paradise for wild duck.
We were marching along, when some one’s sharp eyes espied a solitary black duck feeding close to the shore, about thirty yards away. Suddenly it rose with a frightened flutter. With considerable difficulty I had managed to cock my gun. I raised it to my shoulder, with a strong fear that it would go off, and an inward prayer that it wouldn’t, took accurate aim by pointing in the direction of the bird, and shutting my eyes—with the Latin inscription brought at that moment vividly before me, as if the letters had elongated from the butt to the barrel—I thought of my past sins and pulled the trigger.
EIDER DUCK (SOMATERIA MOLLISSIMA).
Once I participated in a railroad accident when a locomotive almost telescoped our car; but it was an insignificant impression to the condensed crash and astonishing concussion that followed the snapping of the cap. As if weary of well-doing, the old gun went off with a vengeance, blowing the stock off the barrel with a retrograde movement that met my shoulder on the way with a deliberate intention to dislocate, sent the hammer into the air, singed the hair from around my eyes closer and more speedily than I have ever been professionally shaved on my chin, and gave the trusting hand that was supporting the barrel a shake of extreme familiarity—a left-handed compliment—that was reflected up my arm and down the spinal column until it bred my deepest and most heartfelt contempt. Like Richard, when about to fight for his kingdom, I was depressed, and
“Had not that alacrity of spirit
And cheer of mind that I was wont to have.”
After having carried that gun round the island for three days, sparing no pains to keep it dry, to oil its rusty barrel and wash its musty stock, I felt it had been an ungrateful companion, undeserving of the personality with which we had almost invested it, and, to use a modern metaphor, that it “had gone back on me.” It evoked on my part an et tu, Brute! sort of feeling. As I looked at it in silent woe, lock, stock and barrel lying in bits, I felt sore enough at its conduct to have given it a retributive kick, and sent it into the river, but the kicking capacity of my legs had been too materially weakened by the last kick of the gun.