He spoke kindly and cheerfully; but Freeman felt a touch of reproach. Shortly Cousin Jim resumed talking duck. Freeman stared at the decoys through the interstices of the reeds. Suddenly from nowhere another flock materialized. They were low above the marsh, headed straight for the blind, their wings set. The direction of flight was so squarely toward the shooters that Freeman perceived with satisfaction that no calculation would be required for the shot: he could just hold right at them, like shooting at a paper on a fence. He had handled a shotgun a very little, but he was not a hunter. “Let ’em have it!” muttered Cousin Jim. Freeman arose to his feet, prepared to pulverize the two leaders. The instant the two men showed, the entire flight translated the momentum of their horizontal approach into a climb straight up. It is what an aeroplane does when it _zooms_. In addition every duck added his own duck power to the effort. They “towered,” as sportsmen have it; and until you have seen it you can never imagine how fast and how far a duck can tower while you are winking an eye. Instead of being able to shoot as he would at stationary targets, Freeman was flustered by wildly scattering and escaping elusiveness. He banged away lustily, and of course missed both barrels. “Get any?” queried Cousin Jim, blowing the black powder smoke from his gun. “No: missed,” replied Freeman shortly. He had heard two lovely splashes from Cousin’s Jim side of the flock. “Too bad: better luck next time,” said the latter. Now, as has been said, Freeman was no sort of a shot: he had never had the practice to become so. But no youth ever likes to admit himself a duffer at anything. Freeman began to glow with a dull resentful anger at the situation; and with the anger began to grow a determination. He would show them! However, three more flocks came in, and Freeman showed nobody anything. Twice he missed, and once he forgot to cock his gun! Those were the days before hammerless pieces, of course. He tugged away at the trigger until he felt black in the face. It was very mortifying to a sensitive soul. Cousin Jim seemed to make nothing of these catastrophes; killed his ducks with cheerful regularity; and seemed to be having a good time. Freeman became actually bitter. The whole thing was too silly for words. A fourth flock came in, and _four_ splashes followed the roar of the guns. Freeman had killed a pair!