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"That champagne will spoil if it isn't kept on ice." She complained because some bottles of Burgundy had dust on them. "That's not merely untidy," she said, "but it's bad for the wine. It ought to be stood on end, so that the sediment can settle." She criticised the fact that a brace of canvas-backs were on ice. "All your game should be hung," she said.
"Floating and rowing by turns, I soon came in sight of the bay and the wild celery fields, and also of flocks of water-fowl of different species, among which I could recognise the pochards, the canvas-backs, and the common American widgeon. "Seeking a convenient place near the mouth of the stream, I landed; and, tying the skiff to some weeds, proceeded in search of a cover.
It so chanced that I had met with a rather singular adventure while duck-shooting on the Chesapeake Bay, and the story was related thus: "I was staying for some days at the house of a friend a planter who lived near the mouth of a small river that runs into the Chesapeake. I felt inclined to have a shot at the far-famed canvas-backs.
I saw that the canvas-backs were accompanied by another species of a very different colour from themselves: this was the American widgeon. It was a curious sight to witness the constant warfare that was carried on between these two species of birds. The widgeon is but a poor diver, while the canvas-back is one of the very best.
As for the menu, it comprised terrapin, canvas-backs, oysters, and saddles of mutton, with all the recognized masterpieces of French culinary art. Even the young French and German officers, who had scowled at each other as they had bowed salutations with formal politeness earlier in the evening, fraternized at the supper-table.
My vexation, however, gradually left me; and I stood up in the skiff, turning over in my mind what course I should pursue next. "I looked toward the flock of canvas-backs. It, was a tantalising sight. They sat upon the water as light as corks, and as close together as sportsman could desire for a shot. A well-aimed discharge could not have failed to kill a score of them at least.
He had been gone scarcely a moment before he returned in a great hurry, and, throwing down his ax, seized his gun, which stood in the corner behind the door, exclaiming, "Now I've got a chance to make up for losing that owl. A flock of ducks, regular canvas-backs, have just flown over, and I think they lit in the swamp. You'll have to make tracks to get the start of me this time."
The prosaic traveller perhaps remembers it better from the fact that a great sea-monster, in the shape of a steamboat, takes him, sitting in the car, on its back, and swims across with him like Arion's dolphin, also that mercenary men on board offer him canvas-backs in the season, and ducks of lower degree at other periods. At Philadelphia again at last!
One observer who went out to the air-holes reported examining the bodies of twenty-eight Canvas-backs and nineteen Scaups in addition to many others such as Redheads and Golden-eyes. His survey was not exhaustive and the Gulls had doubtless removed many bodies from the territory he visited.
I became differently occupied, and with a matter that soon drove canvas-backs, and widgeons, and pochards as clean out of my head as if no such creatures had ever existed. "While drifting through the sedge, my attention had several times been attracted by what appeared to be strange conduct on the part of my canine companion.
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