The front of this living column was distinctly marked by a line but very slightly indented, so regular and even was the flight.
Even Marmaduke forgot the morality of Leather-Stocking as it approached, and, in common with the rest, brought his musket to a poise.
“Fire!” cried the sheriff, clapping a coal to the priming of the cannon.
As half of Benjamin’s charge escaped through the touch-hole, the whole volley of the musketry preceded the report of the swivel.
On receiving this united discharge of small-arms, the front of the flock darted upward, while, at the same instant, myriads of those in the rear rushed with amazing rapidity into their places, so that, when the column of white smoke gushed from the mouth of the little cannon, an accumulated mass of objects was gliding over its point of direction.
The roar of the gun echoed along the mountains, and died away to the north, like distant thunder, while the whole flock of alarmed birds seemed, for a moment, thrown into one disorderly and agitated mass.
The air was filled with their irregular flight, layer rising above layer, far above the tops of the highest pines, none daring to advance beyond the dangerous pass; when, suddenly, some of the headers of the feathered tribes shot across the valley, taking their flight directly over the village, and hundreds of thousands in their rear followed the example, deserting the eastern side of the plain to their persecutors and the slain.
“Victory!” shouted Richard, “victory! we have driven the enemy from the field.”
“Not so, Dickon,” said Marmaduke; “the field is covered with them; and, like the Leather-Stocking, I see nothing but eyes, in every direction, as the innocent sufferers turn their heads in terror.
Full one-half of those that have fallen are yet alive; and I think it is time to end the sport, if sport it be.”
“Sport!” cried the sheriff; “it is princely sport!
There are some thousands of the blue-coated boys on the ground, so that every old woman in the village may have a pot-pie for the asking.”
“Well, we have happily frightened the birds from this side of the valley,” said Marmaduke, “and the carnage must of necessity end for the present.
Boys, I will give you sixpence a hundred for the pigeons’ heads only; so go to work, and bring them into the village.”
This expedient produced the desired effect, for every urchin on the ground went industriously to work to wring the necks of the wounded birds.
Judge Temple retired toward his dwelling with that kind of feeling that many a man has experienced before him, who discovers, after the excitement of the moment has passed, that he has purchased pleasure at the price of misery to others.
Horses were loaded with the dead; and, after this first burst of sporting, the shooting of pigeons became a business, with a few idlers, for the remainder of the season, Richard, however, boasted for many a year of his shot with the “cricket;” and Benjamin gravely asserted that he thought they had killed nearly as many pigeons on that day as there were Frenchmen destroyed on the memorable occasion of Rodney’s victory.
CHAPTER XXIII.
“Help, masters, help; here’s a fish hangs in the net, like a poor Man’s right in the law.”
—Pericles of Tyre.
The advance of the season now became as rapid as its first approach had been tedious and lingering.
The days were uniformly mild, while the nights, though cool, were no longer chilled by frosts.
The whip-poor-will was heard whistling his melancholy notes along the margin of the lake, and the ponds and meadows were sending forth the music of their thousand tenants.
The leaf of the native poplar was seen quivering in the woods; the sides of the mountains began to lose their hue of brown, as the lively green of the different members of the forest blended their shades with the permanent colors of the pine and hemlock; and even the buds of the tardy oak were swelling with the promise of the coming summer.
The gay and fluttering blue-bird, the social robin, and the industrious little wren were all to be seen enlivening the fields with their presence and their songs; while the soaring fish-hawk was already hovering over the waters of the Otsego, watching with native voracity for the appearance of his prey.
The tenants of the lake were far-famed for both their quantities and their quality, and the ice had hardly disappeared before numberless little boats were launched from the shores, and the lines of the fishermen were dropped into the inmost recesses of its deepest caverns, tempting the unwary animals with every variety of bait that the ingenuity or the art of man had invented.
But the slow though certain adventures with hook and line were ill suited to the profusion and impatience of the settlers. More destructive means were resorted to; and, as the season had now arrived when the bass fisheries were allowed by the provisions of the law that Judge Temple had procured, the sheriff declared his intention, by availing himself of the first dark night, to enjoy the sport in person.
“And you shall be present, Cousin Bess,” he added, when he announced this design, “and Miss Grant, and Mr. Edwards; and I will show you what I call fishing not nibble, nibble, nibble, as ‘Duke does when he goes after the salmon-trout. There he will sit for hours, in a broiling sun or, perhaps, over a hole in the lee, in the coldest days in winter, under the lee of a few bushes, and not a fish will he catch, after all this mortification of the flesh.
No, no—give me a good seine that’s fifty or sixty fathoms in length, with a jolly parcel of boatmen to crack their jokes the while, with Benjamin to steer, and let us haul them in by thousands; I call that fishing.”
“Ah! Dickon,” cried Marmaduke, “thou knowest but little of the pleasure there is in playing with the hook and line, or thou wouldst be more saving of the game.
I have known thee to leave fragments enough behind thee, when thou hast headed a night party on the lake, to feed a dozen famishing families.”
“I shall not dispute the matter, Judge Temple; this night will I go; and I invite the company to attend, and then let them decide between us.”
Richard was busy during most of the afternoon, making his preparations for the important occasion. Just as the light of the settling sun had disappeared, and a new moon had begun to throw its shadows on the earth, the fisher-men took their departure, in a boat, for a point that was situated on the western shore of the lake, at the distance of rather more than half a mile from the village.
The ground had become settled, and the walking was good and dry.
Marmaduke, with his daughter, her friend, and young Edwards, continued on the high grassy banks at the outlet of the placid sheet of water, watching the dark object that was moving across the lake, until it entered the shade of the western hills, and was lost to the eye.
The distance round by land to the point of destination was a mile, and he observed:
“It is time for us to be moving; the moon will be down ere we reach the point, and then the miraculous hauls of Dickon will commence.”
The evening was warm, and, after the long and dreary winter from which they had just escaped, delightfully invigorating.
Inspirited by the scene and their anticipated amusement, the youthful companions of the Judge followed his steps, as he led them along the shores of the Otsego, and through the skirts of the village.
“See!” said young Edwards, “they are building their fire already; it glimmers for a moment, and dies again like the light of a firefly.”
“Now it blazes,” cried Elizabeth; “you can perceive figures moving around the light.
Oh! I would bet my jewels against the gold beads of Remarkable, that my impatient Cousin Dickon had an agency in raising that bright flame; and see! it fades again, like most of his brilliant schemes.”
“Thou hast guessed the truth, Bess,” said her father; “he has thrown an armful of brush on the pile, which has burnt out as soon as lighted.
But it has enabled them to find a better fuel, for their fire begins to blaze with a more steady flame.
It is the true fisherman’s beacon now; observe how beautifully it throw s its little circle of light on the water!”
The appearance of the fire urged the pedestrians on, for even the ladies had become eager to witness the miraculous draught.
By the time they reached the bank, which rose above the low point where the fishermen had landed, the moon had sunk behind the top of the western pines, and, as most of the stars were obscured by clouds, there was but little other light than that which proceeded from the fire.
At the suggestion of Marmaduke, his companions paused to listen to the conversation of those below them, and examine the party for a moment before they descended to the shore.
The whole group were seated around the fire, with the exception of Richard and Benjamin; the former of whom occupied the root of a decayed stump, that had been drawn to the spot as part of their fuel, and the latter was standing, with his arms akimbo, so near to the flame that the smoke occasionally obscured his solemn visage, as it waved around the pile in obedience to the night airs that swept gently over the water.
“Why, look you, squire, said the major-domo. You may call a lake-fish that will weigh twenty or thirty pounds a serious matter, but to a man who has hauled in a shovel-nosed shirk, d’ye see, it’s but a poor kind of fishing after all.”