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But Arthur, boy-like, sprang up-stairs with the rifle, which had often done execution among the wild-fowl of his native moorlands. Certainly it was a feat to hit such a prominent mark as that mountain of blubber; and Arthur felt justly ashamed of himself when the animal beat the water furiously and dived headlong in his pain.
There was food in abundance at this place raspberries, bananas, and mangoes grew in profusion; whilst the marshes were inhabited by vast flocks of geese, ducks, white ibis, and other wild-fowl. Indeed in the swamps the birds rose in such prodigious numbers as actually to obscure the face of the sun. Here for the first time I saw web-footed birds perched in trees.
They were great magnificoes, very lordly gentlemen, those Persian nobles; hijosdalgo, as they say in Spain; men of large lives, splendor and leisure, scorning trade; mighty huntsmen before the Lord. Of the Greeks, only the Spartans were sportsmen; but where the Spartans hunted foxes and such-like small fry, The Persians followed your true dangerous wild-fowl: lions, leopards, and tigers.
Meanwhile the white men took to rambling; Leo to shoot wild-fowl for supper, Alf to search for "specimens," and Benjy to scramble among the rocks in search of anything that might "turn up." Butterface assisted the latter in his explorations.
From the midst of the crowd, thrust out by its own vividness, appeared the face of a wild-eyed squaw from the remote regions of the Upper Tana-naw; a strayed Sitkan from the coast stood side by side with a Stick from Lake Le Barge, and, beyond, a half-dozen French-Canadian voyageurs, grouped by themselves. From afar came the faint cries of myriads of wild-fowl on the nesting-grounds.
This was the first course merely. In the second were all kinds of game and wild-fowl, roast herons three in a dish, bitterns, cranes, bustards, curlews, dotterels, and pewits. Besides these there were lumbar pies, marrow pies, quince pies, artichoke pies, florentines, and innumerable other good things.
When he came giddily to his senses, he found himself being dragged back to the woods, where the Iroquois flaunted the fresh scalps of his dead friends. Half drawn, half driven, he was taken to the shore. Here, a flotilla of canoes lay concealed where he had been hunting wild-fowl but a few hours before.
For what they already have done in the creation of wild-fowl preserves in Louisiana, Edward A. McIlhenny and Charles Willis Ward deserve the thanks of the American People-at-large. Already the home of these gentlemen, Avery Island, Louisiana, has become an important center of activity in wild-life protection.
I heard some wild-fowl cry last evening; I may find their eggs too, and trap them or some other birds, or get a turtle itself. The first thing I'll now do is to carry my hut nearer to the water, instead of having to bring the water all this way to the hut. That won't take long. I can carry the whole of it in two journeys, and quickly put it up. I must take the fire after it.
They said that wild-fowl were innumerable among the islands; but this, indeed, was obvious to all, for everywhere their plaintive and peculiar cries, and the whirring or flapping of their wings, were heard even when the leafy screen over the encampment hid themselves from view.
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