sultan of the woods; but it was nesting time for the turkey hens and they were all sitting on their eggs in secret places in the deep woods or in dense thickets in the broom grass fields.
The gobbler was still standing on the pine log when the anhinga's sharp ears detected, amid the clamor of the herons, a high thin note twice repeated, coming from amid the cypress trunks beyond the opening in the flooded forest. He knew that it was a female wood duck talking to her little ones, and after a moment or two she came swimming slowly down a winding water lane amid the trees, seven downy yellowish ducklings paddling behind her.
Other eyes saw the wood duck and her brood. One of many logs of various sizes, which lay more than half submerged amid lily-pads and duckweed in the sunlit water near the margin of the lagoon, moved ever so slightly, sinking a little deeper until only two knobs showed above the surface. Very slowly these two black knobs moved forward, cleaving the carpet of duckweed, taking a course which would intersect that of the wood duck and her children.
At that moment the big gobbler on the pine log straightened suddenly. Some sound, the meaning of which puzzled him, had come to his ears from the woods encircling the lagoon and he raised his
