single report, loud as a volley, scatters the unsparing slugs
about their doups, and the still clear water, in sudden disturbance, is
afloat with scattered feathers, and stained with blood.

Now is the time for the snow-white, here and there ebon-spotted Fro--who
with burning eyes has lain couched like a spaniel, his quick breath ever
and anon trembling on a passionate whine, to bounce up, as if discharged
by a catapulta, and first with immense and enormous high-and-far leaps,
and then, fleet as any greyhound, with a breast-brushing brattle down
the brae, to dash, all-fours, like a flying squirrel fearlessly from his
tree, many yards into the bay with one splashing and momentarily
disappearing spang, and then, head and shoulders and broad line of back
and rudder tail, all elevated above or level with the wavy water-line,
to mouth first that murdered mawsey of a mallard, lying as still as if
she had been dead for years, with her round, fat, brown bosom towards
heaven--then that old Drake, in a somewhat similar posture, but in more
gorgeous apparel, his belly being of a pale grey, and his back
delicately pencilled and crossed with numberless waved dusky
lines--precious prize to one skilled like us in the angling
art--next--nobly done, glorious Fro--that cream-colour-crowned widgeon,
with bright rufus chestnut breast, separated from the neck by loveliest
waved ash-brown and white lines, while our mind's eye feasteth on the
indescribable and changeable green beauty-spot of his wings--and now, if
we mistake not, a Golden Eye, best described by his name--finally, that
exquisite little duck the Teal; yes, poetical in its delicately
pencilled spots as an Indian shell, and when kept to an hour, roasted to
a minute, gravied in its own wild richness, with some few other means
and appliances to boot, carved finely--most finely--by razor-like knife,
in a hand skilful to dissect and cunning to divide--tasted by a tongue
and palate both healthily pure as the dewy petal of a morning
rose--swallowed by a gullet felt gradually to be extending itself in its
intense delight--and received into a stomach yawning with greed and
gratitude,--Oh! surely the thrice-blessed of all web-footed birds; the
apex of Apician luxury; and able, were anything on the face of this
feeble earth able, to detain a soul, on the very brink of fate, a short
quarter of an hour from an inferior Elysium!

How nobly, like a craken or sea-serpent, Fro reareth his massy