'Where?' replied I, in astonishment, looking up to the sky, and suspecting that he made some punning allusion to a few fleecy clouds.
'Two teal, by Jupiter!' said he, cocking his piece, and rising up in the boat with great eagerness. Looking in the direction to which he pointed, I saw the birds rising up and down on the rough waves, and occasionally bobbing their heads beneath the brine. There is a grace and sleek elegance which belongs to animals in their state of utmost wildness, that is incomparable. Swans in the tranquil lake, and kine in the richest pastures, are beautiful for the eye to rest on. But the bird which looks out from some high, extreme limb in the wood—even if it be the small, red robin, stretching out its long neck, and displaying an elegance of form, very different from its summer plumpness, ready to flap its wings at the merest crackling of a leaf, or approach of the distant shadow; the straggler from that long file of migratory birds, (how beautifully it undulates, and swerves from a rigid line in yon high aërial flight,) descending to bathe in the woodland swamp, and plunging its head deep into the waves as the quick eye of the sportsman, the flash, and the report are simultaneous; the stag listening with erect ear to the fall of far-off footsteps in the forest, and expressing in that tremulous air the full force of his incipient bound;
——'Non sine vano
Aurarum, et siliiæ metu;
these express an idea of ecstatic life and enjoyment, which it is difficult for the painter to depict.
Tertullian could not get a shot at the teal, for they went under, and never came up again, that we could discover. Nor was the loss of sport to be regretted, as, had he discharged his piece standing, heavily loaded as it was, the recoil would have been sufficient to upset the skiff. Such casualties are not infrequent. It was near this very place that Pomp Ruin, poor black! in his eagerness to shoot a wild duck, got kicked overboard, and went down, with all his sins upon his head; and as the colored clergyman truly observed, in improving the subject on the Sunday following: 'My brudren, he was never hëered of arterwards.' Coasting along still with resolution, we doubled Cape Round-your-hat, and it being high-noon, drew up on the beach at Rider's to dine. An hour and a half was suffered to elapse before we got off from this sterile place, and the afternoon beginning to wear away in divers cruisings, we thought it high time to begin to think of a return.
We had been resting on our oars for a few minutes, Tertullian ceasing from his French and Latin, and maintaining a profound silence. 'Hearken!' said he, suddenly rising up, in an attitude of intense listening; 'it is the surf bursting upon the shore!' I put down my ear, and heard the hollow, heavy roar, and booming of the breakers, rolling upon the beach at Rockaway. 'We are near the mouth of the inlet,' said he; 'pull for the point of yonder island, or we shall be carried out to sea.' I remembered a story told me by Captain Phibious, of the small schooner Sally Jane, who got carried out into the Gulf Stream, four or five hundred miles, without provisions, in which expedition all hands liked to have perished. Fear lent strength and vigor to our arms. Into what peril were we brought through the remissness of those irredeemable negroes Sam and Jim! With such good effect did we pull at the oars, that in a little while we struck the point of land, and leaped upon the shore in safety. 'Do you know where you are!' exclaimed Tertullian.
'Certainly not, except upon a desert strip of sand.'
'You are on Scollop Island.'
My blood froze in my veins. 'We are then,' said I, 'upon the dominions of Floys Boyo, and within the precincts of the Devil-Tavern.'