United States or Peru ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
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.
Holding the rope as clear of the water as we could, the poor quacking duck floated slowly down the muddy current, making an occasional vain effort to get free. We saw at a distance an ugly snout rise to the surface for an instant and then noiselessly disappear. 'There's one! says Pat in a whisper. 'Be sure and not strike too soon, says Willie.
No other noise could disturb us but the cackling of hens and the quacking of ducks. On the same floor was a dining-room and the kitchen, but so far removed from us that we were as private as in a suite of rooms at the celebrated Hotel Bristol. Nant is a quite delightful townling; we only wished we could stay there for weeks.
The forest had drawn to either side to let us pass. Here were the wilder reaches after the intimacies of the little river. Across stretches of marsh we could see an occasional great blue heron standing mid-leg deep. Long strings of ducks struggled quacking from invisible pools. The faint marsh odour saluted our nostrils from the point where the lily-pads flashed broadly, ruffling in the wind.
Ducks in a neighboring lowland were quacking. The whole scene took hold upon Seagraves with irresistible power. "It is American," he exclaimed. 'No other land or time can match this mellow air, this wealth of color, much less the strange social conditions of life on this sunlit Dakota prairie."
The coming of the dog, however, had created quite a commotion upon the lake, for the knot of two dozen ducks on the other side no sooner caught sight of him than, uttering a prodigious quacking, they came swimming and half flying as rapidly as they could toward the mouth of the pipe, to begin feeding upon the oats scattered upon the water.
A prodigious thump shook the wooden flooring above their heads; the whole granary trembled, little fragments of dirt and crumbled wood rained down among them. With a loud, continuous quacking the ducks rushed out from beneath this nameless menace, and did not stay their flight till they were safely in the farmyard. "Don't lose your temper," Anne was saying. "Listen! You've frightened the ducks.
Soon after the boys were startled by the sounds of the loud quacking of ducks over the very place where Koona lay so still and quiet. At first they were very much surprised at this, as not a duck was now seen flying in that direction.
With quacking and wriggling and dabbling, the meal was eaten, and Alix, scraping the bowls for last fragments, and blinking in a flood of sunlight, laughed exultantly at the exhibition. Peter left them there, without one word or look for Cherry, who went back to the house with her sister in a most agitated and wretched state of mind.
Dawn was just breaking as I felt Charlie's great paw on my shoulder next morning. He was very serious. For a moment, as I sat up, still half asleep, I thought he had news of Tobias. But it was only duck. He had heard a great quacking during the night, and was impatient to make a start. So was Sailor.
Word Of The Day