“Well, anyhow, this critter Billings, he ain’t never smelt salt water afore, and he don’t like the smell.  He makes proclamations that Orham is nothin’ but sand, slush, and soft drinks.  He won’t sail, he can’t swim, he won’t fish; but he’s hankerin’ to shoot somethin’, havin’ been brought up in a place where if you don’t shoot some of the neighbors every day or so folks think you’re stuck up and dissociable.  Then somebody tells him it’s the duckin’ season down to Setuckit P’int, and he says he’ll spend his day off, while the boss is away, massycreein’ the coots there.  This same somebody whispers that I know so much about ducks that I quack when I talk, and he comes cruisin’ over in the buzz cart to hire me for guide.  And—­would you b’lieve it?—­it turns out that he’s cal’latin’ to make his duckin’ v’yage in that very cart.  I was for makin’ the trip in a boat, like a sensible man, but he wouldn’t hear of it.

“‘Land of love!’ says I.  ‘Go to Setuckit in a automobile?’

“‘Why not?’ he says.  ’The biscuit shooter up at the hotel tells me there’s a smart chance of folks goes there a-horseback.  And where a hoss can travel I reckon the old gal here’—­slappin’ the thwart of the auto alongside of him—­’can go, too!’

“‘But there’s the Cut-through,’ says I.

“‘’Tain’t nothin’ but a creek when the freshet’s over, they tell me,’ says he.  ’And me and the boss have forded four foot of river in this very machine.’

“By the ‘freshet’ bein’ over I judged he meant the tide bein’ out.  And the Cut-through ain’t but a little trickle then, though it’s a quarter mile wide and deep enough to float a schooner at high water.  It’s the strip of channel that makes Setuckit Beach an island, you know.  The gov’ment has had engineers down dredgin’ of it out, and pretty soon fish boats’ll be able to save the twenty-mile sail around the P’int and into Orham Harbor at all hours.

“Well, to make a long story short, I agreed to let him cart me to Setuckit P’int in that everlastin’ gas carryall.  We was to start at four o’clock in the afternoon, ’cause the tide at the Cut-through would be dead low at half-past four.  We’d stay overnight at my shanty at the P’int, get up airly, shoot all day, and come back the next afternoon.

“At four prompt he was on hand, ready for me.  I loaded in the guns and grub and one thing or ’nother, and then ’twas time for me to get aboard myself.

“‘You’ll set in the tonneau,’ says he, indicatin’ the upholstered after cockpit of the concern.  I opened up the shiny hatch, under orders from him, and climbed in among the upholstery.  ’Twas soft as a feather bed.

“‘Jerushy!’ says I, lollin’ back luxurious.  This is fine, ain’t it?’

“‘Cost seventy-five hundred to build,’ he says casual.  ’Made to order for the boss.  Lightest car of her speed ever turned out.’

“’Go ‘way!  How you talk!  Seventy-five hundred what?  Not dollars?’