THE TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE GUNS

“Bang!  Bang!  Bang!  Not a feather spare!  Kill!  Kill!  Kill!  Wound and rip and tear!”

That is what the terrible guns roar from morning to night at Mrs. Quack and her friends as they fly on their long journey to their home in the far North.  I don’t wonder that she was terribly uneasy and nervous as she sat in the Smiling Pool talking to Peter Rabbit; do you?

“Yes,” said she, continuing her story of her long journey from the sunny Southland where she had spent the winter, “the farther we got, the more there were of those terrible guns.  It grew so bad that as well as Mr. Quack knew the places where we could find food, and no Duck that ever flew knew them better, he couldn’t find one where we could feel perfectly sure that we were safe.  The very safest-looking places sometimes were the most dangerous.  If you saw a lot of Rabbits playing together on the Green Meadows, you would feel perfectly safe in joining them, wouldn’t you?”

Peter nodded.  “I certainly would,” said he.  “If it was safe for them it certainly would be safe for me.”

“Well, that is just the way we felt when we saw a lot of Ducks swimming about on the edge of one of those feeding-places.  We were tired, for we had flown a long distance, and we were hungry.  It was still and peaceful there and not a thing to be seen that looked the least bit like danger.  So we went straight in to join those Ducks, and then, just as we set our wings to drop down on the water among them, there was a terrible bang, bang, bang, bang!  My heart almost stopped beating.  Then how we did fly!  When we were far out over the water where we could see that nothing was near us we stopped to rest, and there we found only half as many in our flock as there had been.”

“Where were the others?” asked Peter, although he guessed.

“Killed or hurt by those terrible guns,” replied Mrs. Quack sadly.  “And that wasn’t the worst of it.  I told you that when we started each of us had a mate.  Now we found that of those who had escaped, four had lost their mates.  They were heartbroken.  When it came time for us to move on, they wouldn’t go.  They said that if they did reach the nesting-place in the far North, they couldn’t have nests or eggs or young because they had no mates, so what was the use?  Besides, they hoped that if they waited around they might find their mates.  They thought they might not have been killed, but just hurt, and might be able to get away from those hunters.  So they left us and swam back towards that terrible place, calling for their lost mates, and it was the saddest sound.  I know now just how they felt, for I have lost Mr. Quack, and that’s why I’m here.”  Mrs. Quack drew a wing across her eyes to wipe away the tears.

“But what happened to those Ducks that were swimming about there and made you think it was safe?” asked Peter, with a puzzled look on his face.