THE DUCK HUNT[]
By Steen Steensen Blicher[]
Translated from the Danish by Hanna Astrup Larsen and Published in Twelve stories as Ak, hvor forandret, 1828
IT took me a long time to make up my mind as to what kind of style I should use for this important and interesting chapter. The subject was worthy of heroic treatment, but--to be quite frank--I find the heroic style difficult to handle; the purely historical seemed to me too dry. Moreover, I looked in vain for any forerunners on this boggy path. True, one of our poets once ate roast duck--it is uncertain whether they were tame or wild ducks; I imagine the latter--for lunch, and went about with waterproof boots, but all that doesn't make a duck hunt. In short, all my sources consisted of oral traditions and my own brief experience. I shall therefore have to draw on these as best I can.
The noonday sun was shining on Svirumgaard lake when we hunters, booted and armed, gathered for a luncheon which was almost a dinner _(déjeuner dinatoire)_ in order to strengthen and harden us against the influence of the water. The meal was enlivened by homemade Danish whisky and spiced with interesting stories of former exploits, in the telling of which the sportsmen vied with each other in bold fiction. Being without experience, I could not take part. Nor did I reap full benefit from the instructive conversation, for many of the words and phrases were quite puzzling and mysterious to me. I afterwards secretly--in order not to betray my ignorance--asked my friend the young Ruricolus to explain them to me.
Now we set off. Our host, Counsellor Svirum, was the leader, and posted us all in our places. Passages had been cut through the reeds and rushes from the land out to the open water to enable the hunter to see and shoot the ducks as they were chased by the dogs. At the end of such a passage, and as it happened the last one, I was placed. Before the chief left me, he gave me various kind and fatherly admonitions.
"My young friend," he whispered, "I am told that you know how to handle a gun, but that you're not much used to hunting. Duck-hunting, my dear, is a dangerous sport. Take care that you don't shoot anywhere except through the open passage; and be careful about us in the boat when we get in your way; and for heaven's sake, don't shoot any of the dogs!"
I answered in my natural voice, making the most solemn promises.
"Hush, hush!" he said softly, but a little pettishly, as he struck out with his hand. "Don't speak loud when at your post." With that he hurried off to enter the canoe that was waiting at the other end of the lake. There was silence for a good quarter of an hour.
The weather was fine; the sun shone warm, the air was clear and calm, the lake as smooth as a mirror. Now and then a fish rose, stirring the shiny surface for a moment, whereby the reflection of the Svirumgaard houses and the trees in the garden was disturbed and I was awakened from my sweet fancies. So, I thought, our most beautiful hopes are disturbed, so our splendid castles in the air disappear, so the first tranquil, pure love is changed into the restlessness of passion. But it is of no use to be sentimental when duck-hunting; I tried to drive away such thoughts, which had no place here, and turn all my attention to the business of the day and the duties I had taken upon myself--not that I thought them very arduous, for I had not yet seen or heard a single duck and came very near regarding the whole hunt as nothing but a maneuver, a mockery. I was strangely mistaken.
I was very much incommoded by mosquitoes and flies, impudent guests which I hardly dared to chase away with my hands, both because I remembered the admonitions given me, and because my neighbor, the elder Mr. Ruricolus, every time I moved an arm, shook his head disapprovingly and hissed out between his teeth a sibilant "Hush!" I stood almost at the mercy of my enemies and hardly dared to defend myself except by breathing and moving the muscles of my face, when--when a plunge in the water and a scream, the most hideous I have heard in all my life, sounded from the other end of the lake and was echoed by the hills and by the houses and trees at Svirumgaard.
I thought it must be an accident and cried in terror, "Mr. Ruricolus! The counsellor must have fallen in the lake." His reverence answered with a laugh which, as it was a crime against the laws of the hunt, he tried, at first in vain, to suppress, but which finally died away in a snicker. With a shake of the head and a gesture of his hand, he ordered me to be silent and at the same time relieved my fear. As the air was so still, the other men must have heard my childish exclamation and been amused by it, even though they controlled themselves. This was my first blunder, but it was not to be my last.
Now then--the scream, or rather the roar I heard really came from the throat of Counsellor Svirum, but it was only a hunting signal, a kind of trumpet call which indicated that the hunt was now to begin. The splash in the water came from the dogs which, eight in number, all plunged in the lake at once. Soon after they began baying. (At the supper table I was unlucky enough to mention that they barked, but Mr. Ruricolus replied seriously and instructively, "Hunting dogs, my good friend, don't bark, they bay." I promised I would never again be guilty of such a mistake.) The dogs, then, bayed, first one, then several. The ducks began to quack; some flew up over the reeds and fell down again; others rose higher and made wide circles around the lake.
The hunt advanced, the dogs came nearer and nearer, their commander in the boat likewise. Soon the first shot sounded. The report was thrown back from the houses and then rolled like thunder down over the lake till it died away in the distant heather-clad hills. It was my neighbor who had fired. Then the next man fired and then the others, and a lively shooting went on for over an hour. Meanwhile the boat and the dogs had passed me, and I wondered very much why I didn't get a chance to fire a shot, as most of the ducks must have crossed my beat. This riddle was soon to be solved.
Nevertheless, though only an idle onlooker, I enjoyed the new and unusual spectacle. Dogs and men, equally eager and spirited, were incessantly in motion; the dogs ran around in the reeds and rushes, splashed, panted, bayed; the men fired and loaded, took aim and dropped the guns. But no one that day surpassed our brave host; he was in restless activity, he dashed from one place to another, wherever his presence was most needed, fired, called to the dogs--he alone was allowed to speak--and from his repeated eager, "Fetch it! Ha-ha! Good dog!" I rightly concluded that there must have been a great deal of game killed.
At last he regarded the first hunting-ground as pretty well cleaned out, and all we hunters gathered around our bold admiral, each with his booty--I alone came empty-handed. When he had mustered us all and distributed due praise, especially to Argus who had covered himself with glory, he turned to me, and said, "But you haven't fired your gun at all!"
"I haven't had anything to fire at," I said. He shook his head. "I assure you," I repeated, "I haven't seen anything but some fishes swimming past me in the surface of the water; not a single duck."
There was an outburst of laughter like that on Olympus when the lame Hephaistos took on himself the form of a servant and waited on table; and when they couldn't laugh any more, they all told me that what I in my ignorance had taken for fishes was nothing but mallard ducks.--We each got a glass of whisky, and so ended the first act. The scene was now changed to another inlet of the bay.
There the passages cut out to the open water were so long that one could not shoot through the whole length of them. Our leader, who foresaw everything, had made a wise--but for me, alas, unlucky--arrangement. Midway between the land and the open water two poles had been driven in and a wide board laid across them; from this outpost the hunter could cover the entire passage. The counsellor himself took us out in the boat and posted us all on our respective platforms.
When I had mounted mine and my leader left me, he said with a mischievous smile, "Look out now, when the fishes come swimming past you, that you don't fall in."
The gibe in the first part of his speech I swallowed, but the warning in the second part I brushed away with a confident, "Don't worry, Mr. Counsellor; I'm not dizzy."
Vain self-conceit! How soon to be punished! When the dogs gave the alarm I saw some of those creatures which I still thought belonged to the fish family, but which the others classed as birds. My opinion was unchanged until one of these amphibia swam so near me--in fact under me--that I had to acknowledge the truth and admit that it really was a mallard duck swimming with only half its head above water and the rest submerged in order to fool the dogs. Now I was about to shoot, but before I was ready, in fact with the first movement of my gun, the duck dived under and got away. It was not long, however, before another slipped out from the reeds; I cocked my gun, took aim, pulled the trigger, and--fell backward into the lake. It was not so deep but that I soon had head and shoulders above the water.
In the same moment I heard a well-known voice calling, "In the name of all periwigs! Who was it that fell in?" Another voice answered, "The long-legged Copenhagener," and a third, "Shove the boat along and fish him up!" It was so done, and wringing wet, crestfallen, and ashamed, I was taken to land, and then I trotted back to the house.
The counsellor expressed regret at my accident, but I thought with a suppressed chuckle, and told me to see his wife who no doubt could find some dry clothes for me. My friend Hans Mikkel accompanied me, and the others continued their interrupted sport, which now had lost all attraction for me.