In the east a faint light had been slowly growing. It had not seemed to affect the darkness, yet in some manner indeterminate gray objects grew into visibility. The reed-grown banks of the channel through which they were poling began to be dimly perceptible: there was a glint on the water of tiny ponds to right and left: an horizon was defined. This half-light increased. The ponds and waterways became almost plain. One found himself in a world of multiplying details. And from all about came splashings, quackings, the roar of rising wings, the overhead whistle of departing wings. It seemed incredible that one could not see their owners, they were so loud and so near, and the light was by contrast with the draining night so strong. Freeman, in spite of his determination to be miserable, felt the stirrings of a faint excitement. The boat turned into a pond. Cousin Jim dropped overboard one by one his wooden ducks, then rushed the craft into the reeds. He busied himself with the latter for a moment; upturned a box to sit on. “Load your gun,” he instructed Freeman in a low voice. “We’re just about in time.” There ensued a period of waiting while the light grew. In that period Freeman’s miseries returned on him. His watch told him it was six o’clock: his body told him it was even colder than he had thought; his anticipation showed him an interminable vista of minutes to be passed one by one. He was entirely encased within his own shell. Something sudden dragged him out. He had a startling impression of the whistling rush of something swift in the air, of a bulk rising, of two shattering impacts. The fact was a flock of ducks had come in to the decoys; Cousin Jim had got to his feet; and had shot twice. Now as he was opening the breech of his gun he spoke in his ordinary voice. “Why didn’t you shoot?” he was asking. Freeman could not very well tell the whole truth and say he had not shot because he had been suffering so cruelly. So he muttered a half-truth about not having seen them. But the incident caused him again to look outside himself. He saw that the daylight had flooded the world: that the marsh stretched away interminably brown; that the sky was gray streaked with slate: that the little pond was ruffled by skurrying cats-paws and that the wooden ducks were bobbing solemnly at the ends of their lines. Then Cousin Jim produced a queer instrument of wood and nickle, a little bigger than a cigar, and began to talk duck on it. Freeman could see nothing, but from somewhere came a whistle of wings, which died away. After a moment Cousin Jim stopped talking duck and turned his face to Freeman. “Mallards,” he said. “They’re wise old birds. You must have moved your head when they were circling right above us. You’ve got to hold absolutely rigid until they turn in over the decoys.”