and two more racers took their places at one end of it. By that time
it was almost dark, and I broke up the race trying to get nearer in my
canoe so as to watch things better. Twice since then I have heard
from summer campers of their having seen loons racing across a lake. I
have no doubt it is a frequent pastime with the birds when the summer
cares for the young are ended, and autumn days are mellow, and fish
are plenty, and there are long hours just for fun together, before
Hukweem moves southward for the hard solitary winter life on the
seacoast.

Of all the loons that cried out to me in the night, or shared the
summer lakes with me, only one ever gave me the opportunity of
watching at close quarters. It was on a very wild lake, so wild that
no one had ever visited it before in summer, and a mother loon felt
safe in leaving the open shore, where she generally nests, and placing
her eggs on a bog at the head of a narrow bay. I found them there a
day or two after my arrival.

I used to go at all hours of the day, hoping the mother would get used
to me and my canoe, so that I could watch her later, teaching her
little ones; but her wildness was unconquerable. Whenever I came in
sight of the nest-bog, with only the loon's neck and head visible,
standing up very straight and still in the grass, I would see her slip
from the nest, steal away through the green cover to a deep place, and
glide under water without leaving a ripple. Then, looking sharp over
the side into the clear water, I would get a glimpse of her, just a
gray streak with a string of silver bubbles, passing deep and swift
under my canoe. So she went through the opening, and appeared far out
in the lake, where she would swim back and forth, as if fishing, until
I went away. As I never disturbed her nest, and always paddled away