e it has,
too, for its flame-legs in the frigid seas it frequents; for it is found
in the uttermost North, and dares all the severities of Polar cold.

But we have got into the afternoon too quickly, and now return to our
morning pursuit of eider-duck. It was not long after the above spectacle
of magic disappearance that the elder Canadian rose, went forward, and
fired his piece. Two large birds, one black and white, the other brown,
sprang up from the water and flew briskly away,--flew, as I thought, out
of sight; the man meanwhile returning to his seat and the helm, with the
same composed silence, and the same attractive, inscrutable face as
before. But three hundred yards farther on we came to the male bird,
quite dead. I was near firing upon it, being led by its motion on the
waves to think it alive, and not in the least connecting it with the
bird. I had but just now seen flying off in all apparent health,--when
the Canadian, touching Bradford, and pointing, said quietly, "Dead," and
the latter shouted to me accordingly. Presently, as the boat swept past,
I stooped and drew it in,--a beautiful creature, with velvety violet
black accompanied by dark olive-green about the head, while the neck,
breast, and back were white as snow, and all the rest a glistening
black.

"An eider! King eider!" cried the Artist, joyfully. Then, "Isn't it a
king eider?" he said to the Canadian, holding it up.

The other nodded.

"Really a king eider!" murmured the Artist, as he now bent over it with
bright eyes.

It was not, but the male of the other species, though I knew no better
at the time. The king duck is one of the most Arctic of all Arctic
birds, and condescends to Lower Labrador only in winter, nor then
frequently. A temperature at the freezing-point is to him a mere oven,
which one should be a salamander to live in; with the thermometer thirty
or forty degrees lower, he is still sweltered; while his custom of
growing his own coat, though it saves him from shoddy, expense, and
Paris fashions, has the disadvantage that he cannot strip it off at
pleasure, not even when away from the ladies and the dinner-table. He is
fain, therefore, to keep well away toward the Polar North, where the
climate is more temperate and pleasing, leaving Newfoundlanders and
Labradorians to roast themselves, if they _will_ do so.

While the boat sailed on, still seeking the eider-island,--which at
first, so the Artist said, was "half a mile off,"