squadrons of widgeons and bluebills began their long journey. In a single night all the marsh lagoons and flooded rice lands bordering the river were almost emptied of coots. Soon, of all the myriads of ducks which had spent the winter along the river flats, only a few small flocks of blue-winged teal, a half dozen belated widgeons or baldpates and the two shovellers remained.
The wind, which for days had blown from the east, swung southward. Suddenly the air grew languid and warm. The lagging baldpates disappeared. Coral-billed gallinules supplanted the rear-guard of the coots. An hour after the next sunrise the last flock of teal mounted as though at a signal, circled high, then headed away to the north. The shoveller drake and his mate watched them go; and just before they disappeared in the distance, the female shoveller, without a glance at her partner or a sound of farewell, bounded upward and whirred away in pursuit.
From a dead cedar at the edge of the pineland, far away across the marshes, a hawk pitched forward, opened long pointed wings, and shot northward at amazing speed—the speed of the peregrine falcon on the track of his prey. He passed like a winged projectile not more than a hundred yards from the lagoon of the shoveller drake. The latter did not see him, did not know that at the very out
