Often he laughed aloud, sending a great shout of mirth across the
water in fresh relish of those comedies best known and best enjoyed.
It was as excruciatingly funny as it had ever been, when his boat
nosed its way into a great flock of ducks idling upon the water, to
see the mad paddling haste of those nearest him, the reproachful turn
of their heads, or, if he came too near, their spattering run out of
water, feet and wings pumping together as they rose from the surface,
looking for all the world like fat little women, scurrying with
clutched skirts across city streets. The pelicans, too, delighted him
as they perched with pedantic solemnity upon wharf-piles, or sailed in
hunched and huddled gravity twenty feet above the river's surface in
swift, dignified flight, which always ended suddenly in an abrupt,
up-ended plunge that threw dignity to the winds in its greedy haste,
and dropped them crashing into the water.
When darkness came suddenly at last, he made in toward shore, mooring
to the warm-fretted end of a fallen and forgotten landing. A
straggling orange-grove was here, broken lines of vanquished
cultivation, struggling little trees swathed and choked in the
festooning gray moss, still showing here and there the valiant golden
gleam of fruit.
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