The third battalion of that seemingly inexhaustible army has come and gone; and, mechanically, we are thrusting fresh shells into the faintly smoking gun-barrels.
“Got mine that time, both of them.” No repression, nor polite self-abnegation from Sandford this time; just plain, frank exultation and pride of achievement. “Led ’em a yard––two, maybe; but I got ’em clean. Did you see?”
“Yes, good work,” I echo in the formula. 300
“Canvas-backs, every one; nothing but canvas-backs.” Again the old marvel, the old palliation that makes the seemingly unequal game fair. “But, Lord, how they do go; how anything alive can go so––and be stopped!”
“Mark to windward! Straight ahead! Down!” 301
Chapter IX––Oblivion
This, the morning. Then, almost before we mark the change, swift-passing time has moved on; the lowering mist has lifted; the occasional pattering rain-drops have ceased; the wind, in sympathy, is diminished. And of a sudden, arousing us to a consciousness of time and place, the sun peeps forth through a rift in the scattering clouds, and at a point a bit south of the zenith.
“Noon!” comments Sandford, intensely surprised. Somehow, we are always astonished that noon should follow so swiftly upon sunrise. “Well, who would have thought it!”
That instant I am conscious, for the first time, of a certain violent aching void making insistent demand.
“I wouldn’t have done so before, but now that you mention it, I do think it emphatically.” This is a pitiful effort at a jest, but it passes unpunished. “There comes Johnson to bring in the birds.” 302