I cal'late I must have fell asleep, for when I looked at my watch it was
close to one o'clock, and time for us to be getting back to port. I
got up and stretched and took an observation, but further'n Clarissa's
umbrella on the skyline, I didn't see anything stirring. Brother James
wa'n't visible, but I jedged he was within hailing distance. You can't
see very fur on that point, there's too many sand hills and hummocks.

I started over toward the Greased Lightning. I'd gone only a little
ways, and was down in a gully between two big hummocks, when "Bang!
bang!" goes both barrels of a shotgun, and that Todd critter busts out
hollering like all possessed.

"Hooray!" he squeals, in that squeaky voice of his. "Hooray! I've got
'em! I've got 'em!"

Thinks I, "What in the nation does the lunatic cal'late he's shot?" And
I left my own gun laying where 'twas and piled up over the edge of that
sand bank like a cat over a fence. And then I see a sight.

There was James, hopping up and down in the beach grass, squealing like
a Guinea hen with a sore throat, and waving his gun with one wing--arm,
I mean--and there in front of him, in the foam at the edge of the surf,
was two ducks as dead as Nebuchadnezzar--two of Lonesome Huckleberries'
best decoy ducks--ducks he'd tamed and trained, and thought more of
than anything else in this world--except rum, maybe--and the rest of
the flock was digging up the beach for home as if they'd been telegraped
for, and squawking "Fire!" and "Murder!"

Well, my mind was in a kind of various state, as you might say, for a