“What do you mean, as I wish? You know the water. Is there water to carry us there?”
“The tide is low. Who knows?”
“It will be daylight before we get there if we don’t hurry.”
The boatman did not answer.
All right, you surly jerk, the shooter thought to himself. We are going to get there. We’ve made two-thirds of the way now and if you are worried about having to work to break ice to pick up birds, that is altogether too bad.
“Get your back in it, jerk,” he said in English.
“What?” the boatman asked in Italian.
“I said let’s go. It’s going to be light.”
It was daylight before they reached the oaken staved hogshead sunk in the bottom of the lagoon. It was surrounded by a sloping rim of earth that had been planted with sedge and grass, and the shooter swung carefully up onto this, feeling the frozen grasses break as he stepped on them. The boatman lifted the combination shooting stool and shell box out of the boat and handed it to the shooter, who leaned over and placed it in the bottom of the big barrel.
The shooter, wearing his hip boots and an old combat jacket, with a patch on the left shoulder that no one understood, and with the slight light places on the straps, where stars had been removed, climbed down into the barrel and the boatman handed him his two guns.
He placed them against the wall of the barrel and hung
