ody that comparatively few landsmen
ever hear. Millions of the birds never hesitate at this point in their
flight, although thousands of them do. These latter make the
neighboring waters their home for the rest of the winter. Great flocks
of ducks are continually sailing about the rugged shores, and the
frozen cranberry marshes of Fort Pond Bay, lying to the westward, are
their favorite feeding-grounds. The birds are always as fat as butter
when making their flight, and their piquant, spicy flavor leads to
their being barbecued by the wholesale at the seat of shooting
operations. One of the gunner's cabins has nailed up in it the heads
of 345 ducks that have been roasted on the Point this winter.

Early morning is the favorite time for shooting. At daybreak the
flights are heavy, and from that time until seven o'clock in the
morning they increase until it seems as though all the flocks which
had spent the night in the caves and ponds on the Connecticut shore
were on the wing and away for the south. By ten o'clock in the
forenoon the flights grow rarer, and the rest of the day only
stragglers come along. A good gunner can take five dozen of these
birds easily in a morning's work, provided he can and will withstand
the inclemency of the weather.

Keeper Clark never shoots ducks. Scarcely a morning has dawned for two
months but that several of the poor birds have been picked up at the
foot of the light house tower with the broken necks which have mutely
told the story of death, reached by plunging headlong against the
crystal walls of the dazzling lantern overhead the night before. There
is a tendency with such migratory birds as are on the wing at night to
fly very high. But the great, glaring, piercing, single eye of Montauk
light seems to draw into it by dozens, as a loadstone pulls a magnet,
its feathered victims, and they swerve in their course and make
straight for it. As they flash nearer and nearer, the light, of
course, grows brighter and brighter, and at length they dash into what
appears a sea of fire, to be crushed lifeless by the heavy glass, and
they fall to the ground below, ready to be plucked for the oven.
Inside the lantern the thud made by these birds when they strike is
readily felt. Although they are comparatively small, yet so great is
their velocity that the impact creates a perceptible jar, and the
lantern is disfigured with plashes of their blood. Upon stormy and
foggy nights the destruction of b