Page:The Way of the Wild (1930).pdf/271

 with his strong, hooked, yellow bill. For perhaps a quarter of an hour he devoted himself to his toilet, while the dawn brightened round him. Then he, too, spread his dark pinions and began the active business of the day.

Jen, halfway to Little Inlet now, saw a great blue heron winging with measured strokes across the marshes to his left. He paid no attention to the bird, for it was only one of many herons inhabiting the marshes, though this one seemed larger than most. Just before landing on the back beach of the barrier island, the marshman saw a bald eagle circling high in the air. To Jen the king of birds was a familiar spectacle. Lager to cast his bass line into the surf beside the inlet's mouth while the flood tide was still running fast, he gave the soaring bird scarcely a second glance.

Scanning the sunlit eastern horizon in search of bluebill flocks coming in from the ocean to the sheltered waters behind, he walked briskly across the sandy flats toward the front beach. When, about an hour and a half later, he returned to the boat, he did not know that the eagle was still circling almost directly overhead, but much higher, so high that it was now a mere spot against the pale-blue dome of the sky.

The marshman plodded across the soft sands toward the bateau, his gun across his shoulder, three