I say, Dave,
there's no fun in this; let's go!"

"Hist! pee-eugh, pee-eugh!" whistled Dave loudly, and then in quite a
low tone that sounded distant, and this he kept up incessantly and with
a strange ventriloquial effect.

The boys were all excitement now, for they grasped at once the cause of
their companion's rapid change of manner. For there in the distance,
coming down with the wind in scattered flight and as if labouring
heavily to keep themselves up, appeared a flock of lapwings pretty well
a hundred strong.

"Hooray! At last, Tom!" cried Dick. "Will they come and settle on the
net, Dave?"

"Not a bird of 'em if thou keeps up that ruck," whispered the man
excitedly.

The next minute he was imitating the cry of the peewit, and it was
answered from the distance by the birds coming along, while the two
stragglers which had been hanging about so long now rose up, circled
round, and settled again.

"Look at them!" whispered Dick. "Lie low, Tom; they're coming."

Both lads were on the tiptoe of expectation, but it seemed as if they
were to be disappointed, for the flock came on slowly, uttering its
querulous cries, and circled round as if to pass over, but they were
evidently still attracted by the decoy-birds, and hesitated and flew to
and fro.

"Oh, if they don't light now!" said Dick to himself. "They're going,"
he sighed half aloud, and then he seized Tom's arm in his excitement,
and gripped it so hard that the boy nearly cried out, and would have
done so but for the state of eagerness he too was in.

For after farther signs of hesitation and doubt, all of which were in
favour of the flock going right away, one of them seemed to give a
regular tumble over in the air, as if it were shot, and alighted.
Another followed, and another, and another, till, to the intense
excitement of the occupants of the boat among the reeds, the long, low
spit of gravel, almost level with the water, became alive with birds
running here and there.

It was on Dick's lips to cry, "Now, Dave, pull!" but he could not speak,
only watch the thin, keen, yellow man, whose eye glittered beneath his
rough hairy cap as he slowly tightened the line, drawing it up till it
was above the surface of the water, which began to ripple and play about
it in long waves running off in different directions. There was so
great a length that it was impossible to draw it tight without moving
the spreader poles; and as the lads both thought of w