atically tabooed the use of chairs, and made a feather bed an
indispensable adjunct to repose.

After a long chase Carlo secured his bird, and swimming to the nearest
shore, ran around the edge of the ice, in a way which showed his
appreciation of the difference between running, and swimming against a
five-knot tide. Securing the bird, he was allowed to shake himself, and
was then called into the boat, from which a good lookout was kept, as
there now existed some chance for good management and skilful shooting.

The first victims were a flock of black ducks, which with the usual
readiness to decoy of these birds, had flown in and lit among the decoys
before La Salle could warn his boys, who had their backs turned at the
time. They managed, however, to hear him, and poured in a sharp volley,
killing four in the water, while La Salle picked a brace out on the
wing.

Regnar, who had a breech-loader, got ready in time to kill a brace of
Moniac duck out of a flock which swept past uttering their singularly
desolate call of "Ouac-a-wee, ouac-a-wee!" and by the time these birds
were retrieved, several faint reports to the eastward were heard, and a
vast cloud of geese of both kinds rose just above the floating ice, and
swept up towards the bar. Most of these settled down among the floes;
but one large flock of brent swept over Peter, in answer to his almost
perfect calling. The leaders of the flock were in the very act of
alighting when he fired, and a dozen, at least, lay dead when the white
smoke of his volley cleared away.

"I must have one turn with my float," said La Salle, after the three had
taken lunch and had their share of a pint of hot, strong coffee
prepared in the Crimean lantern. "The tide will soon turn, and I shall
work out into the ice and come up with it. You, boys, must look out for
the flying birds, and take in the floating decoys before they are
crushed or lost."

Launching the light boat, he fitted his rowlocks, and with a light pair
of sculls rowed for an hour out into the Gulf, taking care to keep well
to the eastward. At the end of that time he unshipped his sculls, took
in his rowlocks, fitted his sculling-oar into its muffled aperture, and
getting himself comfortably settled, grasped his oar with his left hand,
and with his eyes just peering over the gunwale, let the light boat
drift with the returning tide, and its fantastic burden of water-worn
congelations.

He had not floated two hundred y