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Updated: May 3, 2025
Then he drew the chair away from the firing-slit and seated himself, facing me. "If you knew," he began, "how much it means to me to talk to one of the outside world your country America! You must tell me much about it. I have always longed to see it, but " He shrugged his shoulders helplessly. "Are you warm?" he asked. "Warm?" I laughed. "I never felt better in my life."
"Then I'll come to dinner." And the door closed with a click. Through the firing-slit I could see him leaping across the marsh toward the gray church with the cracked bell, and as he disappeared by the short cut I pulled the trigger of both barrels and missed. An hour later Suzette greeted me with eyes full of tears and anxiety. "Ah! Mother of Pity! Monsieur is safe!" she cried.
He reached for another breech-loader, motioned me to the chair, let down the three compartments of the firing-slit, and stretched himself out full length on the cot, his keen eyes scanning the bay at a glance. We were just in time a dozen mallards were coming straight for our decoys. Bang! thundered the curé's gun. Bang! Bang! echoed my own. Then another roar from the curé's left barrel.
Back of my pillow was, tightly closed, in three sections, a narrow firing-slit. Beside the bed the candle's glow played over the carved back of the leather-seated chair. Above the closed slit ran a shelf, and ranged upon it were some fifty cartridges and an old-fashioned fat opera-glass. This, then, was Monsieur le Curé's duck-blind, or rather, in French, his gabion.
Besides, you don't know how glad I am that we can have the chance to shoot together. I've been waiting weeks for this wind." He blew out the candle, and again opened the firing-slit. As far as one could see the distant sea was one vast sweep of roaring water. "You see," he said, closing the firing-slit and striking a match "you must stay.
"I have already received a letter, a gentle warning from the palace; but I have a good friend in Cardinal Z. He understands." During the whole of that cold moonlight we took turns of two hours each; one sleeping while the other watched in the chair drawn up close to the firing-slit. What a night!
The live decoys began quacking nervously. The curé, about to speak, tip-toed over to the firing-slit and let down cautiously one of its compartments. "A flight of plovers passing over us," he remarked. "Yes, there they go. If the wind will only hold you shall see there will be ducks in," his gray eyes beaming at the thought.
The marsh seen through the firing-slit, with its overhanging eyebrow of sod, seemed not of this earth.
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