Page:Gray Eagle (1927).pdf/17

 Instinct bade him be still. Terror urged him to flee. It was because instinct prevailed at first that the shoveller for some moments made no move.

A week before, a charge of duck shot had broken his right wing. The shattered bone had not yet knit. He could not fly, and more than once, since the power of flight had thus been taken from him, instinct had saved his life by freezing him into utter immobility in the presence of danger. This same instinct gripped him now, held him motionless as an anchored billet of wood on the glassy surface of the lagoon. But little by little, as the seconds passed, and the surging thunder of wings rolled nearer along the flats, and the panic of the ducks and coots in the pool around him flared higher and higher, the grip of instinct weakened and terror gained the upper hand.

Suddenly terror triumphed. From a marsh pond a quarter of a mile away another great flock of mallards had vaulted into the air. As the throbbing roar of their pinions smote the shoveller's ears, he leaped forward in the water and began swimming desperately toward the margin of the lagoon.

Fifty yards behind him, a squadron of pintail took wing with a sibilant noise as of wind rushing through bare tree-tops. In front of him a regiment of a hundred coots rose and scurried across the water with a mighty clatter of lobed feet pattering on the