Home > Authors Index > Richard Le Gallienne > Pieces of Eight > This page
Pieces of Eight, a novel by Richard Le Gallienne |
||
Book 2 - Chapter 6 |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ BOOK II CHAPTER VI Duck.
I was scarcely dressed when Tom arrived with breakfast, and in a few minutes we had shouldered our guns, and were crossing the half mile of peaty waste that divided us from the marl lakes from which the night wind had carried that provocative quacking. Ahead of us, the crew were carrying the skiffs on their shoulders, and very soon we were each seated in regulation fashion on a canvas chair in front of our respective skiffs, with our guns across our knees, and a negro behind us to do the poling. Charlie went ahead, with Sailor standing in the bow quivering with excitement. The necessity of absolute silence, of course, had been impressed upon us all by the most severe of all sportsmen. But the admonition was scarcely necessary, for, as the sun rose, the scene that spread before us was beautiful enough to have hushed the most garrulous tongue. Far and near stretched misty levels of milkwhite water, in which the mangrove trees made countless islands, sometimes of considerable extent, impenetrable coppices often thirty or forty feet high. From horizon to horizon there was nothing but white water and these coppice-islands of laurel green--one so like another that I marvelled how Charlie expected to find his way back to camp again in the evening. As the sun rose, flooding the wide floors with lonely splendour, it smote upon what at first I took to be gleaming clouds of purest silver unrolling before it. It was an angelic host of white herons soaring and circling, stainless spirits of the dawn high up in the fathomless blue. As we stole silently along in our skiffs, it seemed to me that we were invading some sanctuary of morning, "occult, withdrawn," at the far limits of the world. I looked around to see how it was all affecting my young friend. He was close behind, almost at my shoulder--his beautiful young face like that of a Greek god in a dream. "Isn't it wonderful?" he mused, in that voice like a musical instrument. My heart went out to him in gratitude, for, as I caught sight of Charlie's serious figure ahead--with no thought, I was sure, but duck--I realised how lonely I would have been amid all that solemn morning without my young fellow-worshipper. Presently, the herons alighted on one of the near-by mangrove coppices, and it was as though the green bushes had suddenly been clothed with miraculous white flowers--or been buried under a fall of virgin snow. High up against the sun, several larger birds were uncouthly gambolling in morning joy. It was hard to believe that they were pelicans--such different birds they seemed from their foolish moping fellows at the Zoo. And ah! yonder, riding innocent of danger, filling the morning air with their peaceful quacking, a huge glittering fleet of--teal. At the sight, Charlie turned with solemn warning hand--at which I heard my young friend behind me smothering his profane laughter--and made various signs by which Tom (who was poling me) and I understood that our job, and also that of my companion, was to steal behind one mangrove copse after another till we had got on the other side of that unsuspecting squadron--which might then be expected to take flight in Charlie's direction and rush by him in a terrified whirlwind. This not very easy feat of stalking we were able to accomplish, thereby winning Charlie's immense approval and putting him a splendid temper for the rest of the day; for, as the wild cloud swept over him, he was able to bring down no less than seven. Like a true sportsman, in telling the story afterward in John Saunders's snuggery, he averred that the number was nine! I don't know who was happier; he, or Sailor, again and again splashing through the water and returning with a bird in his mouth. As for me, I'm afraid I am but a half-hearted sportsman, for I noticed that, as the bang-bang-bang of the gun shivered the silence like a crystal mirror, those white spirits of the morning, till then massed in dazzling purity on the mangrove coppice, rose once more in a silver cloud and vanished. It was as though beauty were leaving the world. And once more I was thankful for the presence of dreaming and worshipful youth. "I shall hate him in a minute," said the boy, but just then came across the water to him Charlie's jovial challenge to show his marksmanship, and he took it forthwith with the same nonchalant skill as he did everything, making, by long odds, as Charlie generously admitted, the most brilliant shot of the day. Now duck-hunting, while exciting enough in itself, makes unexciting reading, and when I have recorded that Charlie's bag for the day was no less than seven and a half dozen (I am not sure that our figures will agree) and related one curious incident of the day, I shall leave the reader to imagine the rest. The incident was this: Early in the afternoon, Charlie had made one notable killing (five, I think it was; he will correct me if I am wrong), but one of the birds, not quite dead, had fluttered away into a particularly dense coppice. Sailor had been sent in after it, but, after a lot of fussing about, came out without his bird. Twice Charlie sent him in; with the same result. So, growing impatient, he got out of his skiff, went splashing through the marl water himself, and disappeared in the coppice. Presently we heard his big laugh, and the next second, his gun. A moment or two after, he reappeared, shouldering a huge black snake. No wonder Sailor had been unable to find his bird, for, as Charlie had entered the coppice, the first thing he saw was this snake coiled up in the centre, with a curious protuberance bulging out his neck. Flying from Charlie's gun, the unfortunate duck had landed right into the jaws of the snake! As Charlie ripped open the snake's side--there, sure enough, was the duck. So he was added to the day's bag; and, if he was among those Tom cooked for dinner when we reached camp again that evening, he had the somewhat unusual experience of being eaten twice in one day. _ |
||