Fortunately Don was a good retriever and had brought the duck in with
scarcely a quill ruffled; so I had the satisfaction of breaking his
bands and letting him go free with a splendid rush. But the wind was
too much for him; he dropped back into the water and went skittering
down the harbor like a lady with too much skirt and too big a hat in
boisterous weather. Meanwhile Don lay on the sand, head up, ears up,
whining eagerly for the word to fetch. Then he dropped his head, and
drew a long breath, and tried to puzzle it out why a man should go out
on a freezing day in February, and tramp, and row, and get wet to find
a bird, only to let him go after he had been fairly caught.
Kwaseekho the shelldrake leads a double life. In winter he may be
found almost anywhere along the Massachusetts coast and southward,
where he leads a dog's life of it, notwithstanding his gay
appearance. An hundred guns are roaring at him wherever he goes. From
daylight to dark he has never a minute to eat his bit of fish, or to
take a wink of sleep in peace. He flies to the ocean, and beds with
his fellows on the broad open shoals for safety. But the east winds
blow; and the shoals are a yeasty mass of tumbling breakers. They
buffet him about; they twist his gay feathers; they dampen his
pinions, spite of his skill in swimming.
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