The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-01-07

Meets With Speed More Enormous
 Leap That Rivals ThunderboIt.
 From all the lonely salt-fats and tide-washed, reedy shores of the wide estuary, the fioeks of the sea duck had flown south. After feeding for days to- gether amicably, golden-eye and red head, broad-bilI and dipper, all hob nobbing and bobbing and guttering in company, without regard to difference of kin, they had at last assorted them selves into fiocks of the like species and wing power, and gone off in strong fly ing wedges to seek milder tides and softer skies.
 Nevertheless, though the marshy levels were now stiffened with frost, and ice fringes fingered thin and brittle behind each retreating tide and white fiurries of snow went drifting over the vast, windy spaces of wave and plain, some bold, persistent waifs of life chung to these bleak solitudes. Here and there a straggler from the fiocks, or a belated arrival from farther north, fed solitary and seemed sufficient to. him., self; while here and there few hardy coots, reveling in the loneliness and in the forbidding harshness of the season, swan and dived among the low, lead en colored waves.
 Across ten level miles Of naked marsh land another estuary made in from the Sea. On the shore of this estuary, so 1aae oIn 1t was impossible to distinguish, at high tide, just where the water ended aud the solid land began, solitary surf duck dabbled among the gray, half frozen grasses. Of dull black all over, save for a patch of clear white on his head and another on the back of his neck, he made a sharp conspicuous spot against the paIlid coloring of the marshes. For all his Loneliness, he seemed to be enjoying himself very well, active and engrossed, and to all appearances forgetful of the departed hocks. M Suddenly, however. he stopped feed ing, and sat with head erect and watch ful eyes, rising and falling gently with the pulse of the sedge-c checked flood. Either some unusual sight or sound had disturbed him, or some drift of memory had stirred his restIessness. For several minutes he fioated, forget ful of the savory shelled and squirmfng creatures which his discriminating bill had been gathering from among the oozy sedgeroots. Then, with an abrupt squawl1, he Tapped noisily along the surface of the water. rose into the air, and flew straight inland, mounting as he went to a height far above gunshot
 The flight of the lonely drake was to- wards the shores of the other estuary, ten miles southward. where in all like 1fhood he had some hope of finding the companfonship of his kin, if not bet ter feeding ground. Though his body was very heavy and massive and his wings ridiculousiy short for the bulk they had to sustain. he flew with tre mendous speed and as straight as bullet from a rifle. His wings, howev CT small, were nightly muscled and as tough as steel springs, and they beat the air with such lightning strokes that the sturdy body, head and neck and legs and feet out-stretched in rigid line, was hurled through the air at speed of something like one hundred miles an hour. As he flew, the fiurries of snow gathered into squall of mhirl- ing flakes, almost obscuring the waste of marshland that rushed past beneath his flight, and shutting him off alone in the upper heights of sky.
 Alone indeed he imagined himself, while the cold air and the streaming snowf1akes whistled past his flight. But keen as were his eyes, other eyes keener than his had marked him from a 1oftier height, where the air was clear above the storm strata. A great Arctic goshawk, driven by some unknown wflim to follow the edge of winter southward. was sailing on wide wings through the high, familiar cold. When he saw the black drake far below him, shooting through the snowfiakes like a missile, his fierce eyes famed and mar rowed, his wings gave one mighty beat and then half closed, and he dropped into the cloudy mirk of the storm belt.
 The drake was now about one hun dred yards ahead of the great hawk, and flying at perhaps ninety miles an hour under the mere imp1use of his de- sire to reach the other estuary. When he caught sight of the white terror pursuing him, his sturdy little wings doubled the rapidity of their stroke, till he shot forward at rate of perhaps, two miles a minute. his wedge-shaped body and hard oiled plumage offering small resistance to the air even at that enormous speed. His only chance of escape, as he we'll knew. was to reach the water and plunge beneath it. But he could not turn back, for the terror was behind him. Straight ahead lay his only hope There, not more tan two or three minutes distant, lay his secure refuge. He could see the leaden gray expanse. touched by 8 gleam of cold and lonely sunlight which had pierced the obscurity of the squall Could he reach it? If he could, he would drop into the slow wave, dive to the bottom. and hold to the roots of the swaying weeds till the terror had gone by.
 A hundred yards behind came the hawk moving like dreadful ghost through the swirl and glimmer of the snow. His plumage was white, but penciled with shadowy markings of pale brown. His narrowed eyes, fixed