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Updated: June 7, 2025
"There remains the sacrilegious and graceless cavalier who attempted your Excellency's life last night," said Pearson. "Nay," said the General, "that were stooping too low for revenge. His sword had no more power than had he thrusted with a tobacco-pipe. Eagles stoop not at mallards, or wild-drakes either." "Yet, sir," said Pearson, "the fellow should be punished as a libeller.
Swimming birds speckled the surface; various species of Anatidae swans, geese, and ducks, while the air was filled with flights of gulls and curlews, or was cut by the strong whistling wings of the mallards. Other than waterfowl had chosen this secluded spot for their favourite dwelling-place.
He was paddling me up the sun-lit reaches of the Shataca on Black Creek when suddenly two dusky mallards or black ducks tore out of the willow herb and dodder and came like the wind over our heads. I was using a high- powered duck gun, and brought down both ducks, one, however, with a broken wing.
We are told also of some ducklings who grew so fond of a great, savage house-dog, that though every one else was afraid of him, they showed no fear of his terrible bark; but, on the first approach of danger, would rush in a body to his side, and take shelter in his kennel. Wild ducks, or mallards, are very abundant in marshy places, and are a source of great profit.
"Was there no way of approaching them? This question I had put to myself for the twentieth time without being able to answer it to my satisfaction. "An idea at length flitted across my brain. I had often approached common mallards by concealing my boat under branches or furze, and then floating down upon them, impelled either by the wind or the current of a stream.
Only too often, peer as cautiously as we might, the wily old mallards would catch a glimpse of some slight motion. At once they would begin to swim back and forth uneasily. Always then we would withdraw cautiously, hoping against hope that suspicion would die. It never did. Our stalk would disclose to us only a troubled surface of water on which floated lightly a half dozen feathers.
Two miles below Portsmouth, Ohio, I encountered a solitary voyager in a skiff, shooting mallards about the mouths of the creeks, and having discovered that he was a gentleman, I intrusted my mail to his keeping, and pushed on to a little creek beyond Rome, where, thanks to good fortune, some dry wood was discovered.
But of them all only one species, and that a migratory one, the mallard, has been persuaded to abandon its wandering ways and settle down to a life of ease and obesity as a dependant of man. But it has not been domesticated: the tame ducks in India, as here, are all mallards. The muscovy duck is a distinct species which has been domesticated elsewhere and introduced.
I assure you I look forward happily to a month of idleness stalking Tony's mallards and following Tony's hounds." In the cabinet he wrote half a dozen lines setting out simply the change in his views. "If I know Oliver," he told himself, "I have given him the sign he seeks. I am clear it is God's will, but Heaven help the land Heaven help us all."
When he arrived at the shop, he glanced in at the windows; but among the wild-cats, ptarmigan, black game, mallards, and what not, there was nothing to arrest his attention; it was a stag's head he had in his mind. He went inside, and his first sensation was one of absolute bewilderment.
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