Page:Gray Eagle (1927).pdf/16

 almost motionless upon the surface, split suddenly down the middle, half the fleet making for one side of the lagoon and half making for the other. In all the feathered multitude floating on the placid, shallow waters spreading outward from the river only a gaudy shoveller drake, more brilliantly colored than the mallards and more beautiful even than the pintails except for his broad, ungainly looking bill, remained, to all appearances, indifferent to the peril.

The shoveller, an adult male already attired in full nuptial plumage of green and shining white and rich russet, floated near the middle of the lagoon in open water, free from weeds and sedge. A moment before he had been surrounded by the legions of the coots; but now the coot regiments had melted away around him, hastening toward the reedy margins with an awkward bobbing of blue-black heads and a flashing of gleaming white bills. The mallards were massed toward the northern end of the lagoon, the pintails toward the southern end and along the eastern edge. For a space of yards around the shoveller the water was empty. An enemy looking down from the air could not fail to see the lone drake floating quietly and seemingly unconcerned almost in the middle of the lagoon.

It was not indifference that held him there. Instinct wrestled with terror in the shoveller's brain