After lingering a while, dreamily recalling the
old, hard, half-happy days, and watching my favorite red-headed
woodpeckers pursuing moths like regular flycatchers, I swam out
through the rushes and up the middle of the lake to the north end and
back, gliding slowly, looking about me, enjoying the scenery as I
would in a saunter along the shore, and studying the habits of the
animals as they were explained and recorded on the smooth glassy
water.
[Illustration: CLOCK. THE STAR HAND RISING AND SETTING WITH THE SUN
ALL THE YEAR
Invented by the author in his boyhood]
On the way back, when I was within a hundred rods or so of the end of
my voyage, I noticed a peculiar plashing disturbance that could not, I
thought, be made by a jumping fish or any other inhabitant of the
lake; for instead of low regular out-circling ripples such as are made
by the popping up of a head, or like those raised by the quick splash
of a leaping fish, or diving loon or muskrat, a continuous struggle
was kept up for several minutes ere the outspreading, interfering
ring-waves began to die away.
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