R. D. Blackmore,
Lorna Doone — 10. A brave rescue and a rough ride
(1869)
“ The foaming of it, and the noise, and the cresting of the corners, and the up and down, like a wave of the sea, were enough to frighten any duck, though bred upon stormy waters, which our ducks never had been.There is always a hurdle six feet long and four and a half in depth, swung by a chain at either end from an oak laid across the channel. ”
R. D. Blackmore,
Lorna Doone — 10. A brave rescue and a rough ride
(1869)
“ Now I am uncommonly fond of ducks, both roasted and roasting and roystering; and it is a fine sight to behold them walk, poddling one after other, with their toes out, like soldiers drilling, and their little eyes cocked all ways at once, and the way that they dib with their bills, and dabble, and throw up their heads and enjoy something, and then tell the others about it. Therefore I knew at once, by the way they were carrying on, that there must be something or other gone wholly amiss in the duck-world. Sister Annie perceived it too, but with a greater quickness ”
R. D. Blackmore,
Lorna Doone — 10. A brave rescue and a rough ride
(1869)
“ For a moment I could not help laughing, because, being borne up high and dry by a tumult of the torrent, he gave me a look from his one little eye (having lost one in fight with the turkey-cock) , a gaze of appealing sorrow, and then a loud quack to second it. But the quack came out of time, I suppose, for his throat got filled with water, as the hurdle carried him back again. ”
