stowed upon him by his mottled brown mate, whose colours were
obviously designed not for show but for concealment. When sitting on
her nest, she was practically indistinguishable from the twigs and
dead leaves that surrounded her.

Having laid her egg, the brown duck would cover the precious contents
of the nest with twigs and leaves, that they might not be betrayed by
their conspicuous colour. Then she would steal, silently as a shadow,
through the willow stems to the water's edge, and paddle cautiously
out through the rushes to the open water. On reaching her mate all
this caution would be laid aside, and the two would set up an animated
and confidential quacking. They would sometimes sail around each other
slowly in circles, with much arching of necks and quaint stiff bowing
of heads; and sometimes they would chase each other in scurrying,
napping rushes along the bright surface of the water. Both before and
after these gay exercises they would feed quietly in the shallows,
pulling up water-weed sprouts and tender roots, or sifting insects and
little shellfish from the mud by means of the sensitive tips and
guttered edges of their bills. The mallard pair had few enemies to
dread, their island being so far from shore that no four-footed
marauder, not even the semi-amphibious mink himself, ever visited it.
And the region was one too remote for the visits of the pot-hunter. In
fact, there was only one foe against whom it behoved them to be on
ceaseless guard. This was that bloodthirsty and tireless slayer, the
goshawk, or great grey henhawk. Where that grim peril was concerned,
the brown duck would take no risks. For the sake of those eggs among
the willow stems, she held her life very dear, never flying more than
a short circle around the island to stretch her wings, never swimming
or feeding any distance from the safe covert of the rushes.

But with the glowing drake it was different. High spirited, bold for
all his wariness, and magnificently strong of wing, from sheer
restlessness he occasionally flew high above the ponds. And one day,
when some distance from home, the great hawk saw him and swooped down
upon him from aerial heights.

The impending doom caught the drake's eye in time for him to avoid the
stroke of that irresistible descent. His short wings, with their
muscles of steel, winnowed the air with sudden, tremendous force, and
he shot ahead at a speed which must have reached the rate of a hundred
miles