The barge of haunted lives

For more than two hours, a solitary hunter, crouching in a reed-covered sneak-boat that was drawn close to a muddy bank topped with coarse, yellow grass, had been gazing moodily skyward or across the broad expanse of gloomy marshes to the north of Great South Bay. Near him a score of gray and black decoy ducks bobbed lightly on the chill, drab waters of a wide creek, but their complacent attitudes thus far had failed to inspire among vagrant wildfowl any desire to seek their companionship.

The hunter was a thick-set, sullen-looking man, with a broad, clean-shaven face and thick, curly gray hair. He had only one eye--a greenish-yellow, searching left eye which often produced uncanny effects on persons on whom it gazed. For five years it had been this man’s wont to go down to Sellersville on the first day of November. There he was known to Captain Peters, the boathouse-keeper, as Colonel Canbeck. From Peters he hired a little sloop, with a rusty motor that was barely powerful enough to drive the craft up and down the tidal creeks, which, flowing through the monotonous expanse of salt meadows, empty into Great South Bay.

The sloop had a closed cabin in which were a couple of bunks, a folding table, several lockers and a stove. Canbeck’s shooting trips lasted one week, and he always went on them alone, seldom getting more than ten or twelve miles from the Peters boathouse. Upon arriving at the shooting grounds, he would anchor the sloop, and for two or three days at a time the little craft would remain at the same anchorage. Leaving the sloop alone, Canbeck would paddle off in a sneak-boat, sometimes a mile or two distant, and, after floating his decoys, he would sit motionless for hours, within his screen of reeds, except when, fortune favoring him, he was engaged in bringing down and gathering in such wildfowl as exposed themselves to his unerring aim.

It was now a few minutes after four o’clock, and the gray sky and lapping waters were growing more chill and dark. It was Canbeck’s first day out this season, and since ten o’clock in the morning his gun had been silent. With an exclamation of disgust, he deposited it in the bottom of the boat and began preparations for his return to the sloop.

As the duckhunter, with reluctant hands, began to draw in one of the strings to which his floating decoys were attached, he swept a last questioning glance around him. Suddenly the expression of bored resignation on his features gave place to one of mild interest. Faintly, at first, but soon more distinctly, he heard the distant drone of an airplane. For several moments his attempts to locate the plane were vain; then he saw it--a small, black blot on the western sky. Uncertain concerning the course it was taking, Canbeck reflected that it probably was one of the machines attached to the Mineola flying field and now was returning to its base.

But, as the drone became more viciously assertive, Canbeck observed that the great, man-made hawk was speeding eastward, leaving Mineola further and further behind it, following a course which would take it directly over his head. As it drew nearer, however, it veered suddenly, and Canbeck saw it was a seaplane, flying at a height of about six hundred feet above creeks and meadows. Immediately after it veered, it circled toward the west and mounted higher. After proceeding about a mile in that direction, it turned again and headed eastward, gliding lightly and gracefully downward, in the manner of an albatross as it sinks to the surface of the sea.