the air, as if to alight, but nearly always would
repent in time, and with quickened pinions return to its companions.
Still, occasionally, one would determine to alight, and setting its
wings, circle around one of the stands, and finally be seen, by the
occupants of other ice-houses, to sweep close in to the concealed
ambush. Then would follow a puff or two of smoke, a few distant reports,
and the dead bird, held up in triumph, would convey to his distant
friends the sportsman's fortune.

Several birds fell in this way to the lot of our friends of the East
Bar, and La Salle and Kennedy got one each; but the sport was too
tedious, and La Salle, taking a bullet-bag and powder-flask from his
box, proceeded to count out ten bullets, which he laid carefully before
him.

"I am going to try to bring down at least one goose from those flocks
which pass over us nearly every moment. They are certainly four hundred
yards high, and I shall aim at the leader of the flock in every case,
giving him about ten feet allowance for headway."

The first ball was without effect, although the leader swerved like a
frightened steed as the deadly missile sung past him. The second cut a
feather from the tail of the bird aimed at; and the third failed
likewise. At the fourth shot the leader swerved as before, and then kept
on his way.

"You might as well try to kill them a mile off, as at that distance,"
said Kennedy, disparagingly.

"I hit a bird in that flock, and I think the leader, at that; for I
heard the rap of the ball as it struck. It may have been only through
his quill-feathers. No; there's the bird I hit. See, he can't keep up
with the flock."

The huge gander last fired at had hardly gone a hundred yards, ere,
despite his endeavors, he had lowered several feet below the flock. In
the next decade, the distance was increased to sixty feet, and in the
third to as many yards. In the last hundred yards of his flight he sank
rapidly, although struggling nobly to regain the flock; and when about
fifty yards above the ice, he towered up a few feet into the air, and
fell over backward, stone dead, with a rifle-shot transfixing his body,
in the region of the heart. On weighing him he turned the scale at
fifteen pounds.

Of the remaining six shots but one was effective--breaking the wing-tip
of a young female, which was secured for a live decoy.

Kennedy now proposed a plan for approaching a large flock, which had
alighted about a h