The paddle was still fast to its cord--as it should always be in trying experiments--and I tossed it into the canoe. The rattle roused Umquenawis from his wonder, as if he had heard the challenging clack of antlers on the alder stems. He floundered out in mighty jumps and came swinging along the shore, _chocking_ and grunting fiercely. He had seen the man again and knew it was no fish--_Unh! unh! eeeeeunh-unh!_ he grunted, with a twisting, jerky wriggle of his neck and shoulders at the last squeal, as if he felt me already beneath his hoofs. But before he reached the point I had stuffed my flannel shirt into the hole in the canoe and was safely afloat once more. He followed along the shore till he heard the sound of voices at camp, when he turned instantly and vanished in the woods.
A few days later I saw the grumpy old brute again in a curious way. I was sweeping the lake with my field glasses when I saw what I thought was a pair of black ducks near a grassy shore. I paddled over, watching them keenly, till a root seemed to rise out of the water between them. Before I could get my glasses adjusted again they had disappeared. I dropped the glasses and paddled faster. They were diving, perhaps--an unusual thing for black ducks--and I might surprise them. There they were again; and there again was the old root bobbing up unexpectedly between them. I whipped my glasses up--the mystery vanished. The two ducks were the tips of Umquenawis' big antlers; the root that rose between them was his head, as he came up to breathe.
It was a close, sultry afternoon; the flies and mosquitos were out in myriads, and Umquenawis had taken a philosophical way of getting rid of them. He was lying in the water, over a bed of mud, his body completely submerged. As the swarm of flies that pestered him rose to his head he would sink it slowly, drowning them off. Through my glass, as I drew near, I could see a cloud of them hovering above the wavelets, or covering the exposed antlers. After a few moments there would be a bubbling grumble down in the mud, as Umquenawis blew the air from his great lungs. His head would come up lazily to breathe among the popping bubbles; the flies would settle upon him like a cloud, and he would disappear again, blinking sleepily as he went down, with an air of immense satisfaction.