Page:Gray Eagle (1927).pdf/24

 a shoveller could be found among all the legions of ducks congregated along the Low Country rivers. This winter was of the latter sort. Countless thousands of other ducks fed in the freshwater marshes and the flooded rice lands, but the shoveller regiments had chosen a different feeding ground.

At first the lone drake's searching of the air had no more specific motive than a vague but persistent longing for the companionship of his own species. Of late, however, this longing had become more definite, more poignant. Though winter still had many weeks to run, already he had donned his nuptial dress, already the mating instinct was strong in him. When he scanned the sky now, he was not looking for a flock of shovellers but for a female shoveller, for a mate whom he might woo and win in anticipation of that joyful honeymoon journey in the spring to the far-off northern lake where they would build their nest and rear their young.

Day after day the crippled drake had awaited the coming of that mate. Day after day he had waited and watched in vain. On this day also his search seemed doomed to failure. The sun reached and passed its zenith. The short winter afternoon faded and the night shut down. For hours the drake slept, his head resting on his back, his wide, spade-like bill half buried in his plumage. A large part of the night, however, he spent in feeding, paddling