With two good men to paddle, it is not difficult to tire him out.  Though he swims with extraordinary rapidity under water—­fast enough to follow and catch a trout—­a long deep dive tires him, and he must rest before another.  If you are chasing him, shout and wave your hat the moment he appears, and paddle hard the way his bill points as he dives again.  The next time he comes up you are nearer to him.  Send him down again quick, and after him.  The next time he is frightened to see the canoe so close, and dives deep, which tires him the more.  So his disappearances become shorter and more confused; you follow him more surely because you can see him plainly now as he goes down.  Suddenly he bursts out of water beside you, scattering the spray into your canoe.  Once he came up under my paddle, and I plucked a feather from his back before he got away.

This last appearance always scares him out of his wits, and you get what you have been working hard for—­a sight of Hukweem getting under way.  Away he goes in a smother of spray, beating the water with his wings, kicking hard to lift himself up; and so for a hundred yards, leaving a wake like a stern-wheel steamer, till he gathers headway enough to rise from the water.

After that first start there is no sign of awkwardness.  His short wings rise and fall with a rapidity that tries the eye to follow, like the rush of a coot down wind to decoys.  You can hear the swift, strong beat of them, far over your head, when he is not calling.  His flight is very rapid, very even, and often at enormous altitudes.  But when he wants to come down he always gets frightened, thinking of his short wings, and how high he is, and how fast he is going.  On the ocean, in winter, where he has all the room he wants, he sometimes comes down in a great incline, miles long, and plunges through and over a dozen waves, like a dolphin, before he can stop.  But where the lake is small, and he cannot come down that way, he has a dizzy time of it.

Once, on a little lake in September, I used to watch for hours to get a sight of the process.  Twelve or fifteen loons were gathered there, holding high carnival.  They called down every migrating loon that passed that way; their numbers increased daily.  Twilight was the favorite time for arriving.  In the stillness I would hear Hukweem far away, so high that he was only a voice.  Presently I would see him whirling over the lake in a great circle.—­“Come down, O come down,” cry all the loons.  “I’m afraid, ooo-ho-ho-ho-ho-hoooo-eee, I’m afraid,” says Hukweem, who is perhaps a little loon, all the way from Labrador on his first migration, and has never come down from a height before.  “Come on, O come oh-ho-ho-ho-ho-hon.  It won’t hurt you; we did it; come on,” cry all the loons.