like snow-apples, his eyes like stars.

"That's just a hundred," counted Mr. Kincaid, "and its a humming good
boat load. It'll do. Now you take this demijohn and fill it from the
spring-hole you'll find back of the house, and I'll get the shell-box."

The equipment was finally completed by two wooden shell-boxes to sit on,
a short broad paddle and a long punting pole.

By now the sun had dipped below the horizon leaving nothing of its glory
in the low-hung, hard clouds. All the world seemed clad in velvet-gray,
with dark soft shadows. A gleam of light reflected from water as it
showed in patches here and there. It matched and continued the pale
green light of the heavens, as though the sky had flowed down and
through the blackness of the marshes. The wind came now in heavy gusts,
succeeded by intervals of comparative calm. During these intervals could
be heard the cries of innumerable wildfowl.

Bobby stood at the end of the float, absolutely motionless, taking it
in. His intellectual faculties were as though non-existent. All the
sensitiveness of his nature, like the sensitiveness of a photographic
plate, was exposed to that which took place before him. No little
detail of the scene would he ever forget; and nothing of what its
vastness and mystery and turmoil signified in the world of further
meanings would be lost to him, though for many years he would not
understand them.

But now, as the darkness of the shadows deepened, and the light of water
and sky took on a deeper lucence before being extinguished, for the
first time the sense of pain and the incompleteness of beautiful things
entered his heart. The thing was wonderful; but it hurt. The sight of it
filled him to the lips with a passion of uplift; and yet something
lacked. And the lack of that something was a pain.

Bobby had forgotten that he was cold, that he was alone, that he had
come on an exciting and novel expedition. Mr. Kincaid had disappeared
within the cabin.

A whistle of wings rushed in on the boy's consciousness with startling
suddenness. Across the face of the evening indeterminate, dark bodies
darted low. A prolonged swish of water sounded, and the placid faint
light on the lagoon fifty yards away was broken and troubled. For a
moment it shimmered, and was still. Absolute darkness seemed abruptly
to descend on all the world. From the blackness Bobby heard the low
conversational sounds of ducks newly alit.

"_Ca-chuck!_" said they "_ca-tu