ere
mallards and teals, a couple of dozen at least.

"Fie, fie!" said I. "I fear you've been shooting on the water."

"Sure I did! And here's four things that I don't suppose are good to
eat--they got kind of snaky heads, and red-colored, too. Ain't no
ducks good to eat that ain't got green heads."

"Each man to his taste," said I, "but if you like, you may have the
green heads, and I'll take these with the auburn locks."

"Pshaw! What are they?" answered he.

"Only canvasbacks," said I, "and good fat ones, too. What luck have
you, Jimmy, my son?"

"Well, I went along and helped carry things," said L'Olonnois.

"What's that you've got on a string?" I asked him.

"Oh, that," said he, flushing. "It ain't nothing but a little turtle.
It had funny marks on its back. I caught it in the grass over there
by the lake."

Something about Jimmy's little turtle interested me, and I picked it
up in my hands.

"For amateur sportsmen, gentlemen," said I, "you're doing pretty well.
Your funny little turtle, Jimmy, is nothing but a diamond-back
terrapin. There are perhaps more of them on this coast than anywhere
else in the world to-day. And Partial, here--that friend of ours now
leaping excitedly and joyously before them, barking at this little
turtle of Jimmy's--will perhaps be able to help you find some more of
them in the grass--the market hunters here hunt them with dogs, as
perhaps you did not know."

"We got some oysters, Sir," said Willy, coming forward shyly and
shamefacedly; and showed me the cockpit of the duck boat pretty well
filled. The boy had, it seems, found a reef of these in a brackish arm
which made inland, and dug them by the simple process of stooping down
below the surface of the water, since he had no oyster tongs.

"Well," said I, "it looks as if we would fare pretty well for lunch.
John"--and I called my China boy--"again I find renewed cause for
felicitations on your rescue."

John stood looking at me blankly.

"You savee, John?" said I, showing him one of the canvasbacks, and he
remarked mildly, "All litee." If anything, his lunch was better than
his breakfast, and when I saw him take Jimmy's funny little turtle
from him and examine it with appraising eye, I felt fairly well
convinced that we should not suffer at the dinner hour.

But though a certain gaiety now came to others of the party as we sat
about our midday meal, warm now and well fed, and although the boys
excitedly made plans ab