TEE SPORT OF KINGS. 789 



who is at that very moment stooping at about 100 miles an hour, 

 and before the houbara has got in two flaps of his wings, she is on him 

 and sends him staggering to the ground again, turns at once and 

 binds and the first one is not much behind and there they sit each 

 with a firm hold of the luckless houbara and each dying to begin 

 her feed, but afraid of the other ; but fortunately they do not 

 begin to fight. I have watched the whole tragedy from some 

 distance behind as well as the water pouring from my eyes from 

 racing through the cold air would admit, and now dismount, or rather 

 tumble off my horse, who is too done to stir, and cutting up the 

 houbara, give the falcons a well-earned feed, but having no hoods 

 with me, I have my work cut out taking them back. Fortunately 

 the old horse was quiet and accustomed to being left to himself, so 

 followed meekly behind. 



The whole hunt had taken about 1| hours and I was back for 

 breakfast about li a.m. with two houbara, or rather what remained 

 of the second. A glorious morning's sport and two falcons fairly 

 broken to houbara. That same afternoon, having nothing to do, I 

 took out the two merlins on to a great plain which stretched for 

 about two miles or more beyond my bungalow and soon put up a 

 hoopoe, which " lolloped ' along getting further away from the 

 tree and got on to a babul tree, of which there were a few 

 dotted about the plain. 



1 flushed him thence and he went off unconcernedly to another 

 and far enough from the big clump of trees near my bungalow to 

 give a chase. I again flew him up and he very accommodatingly 

 still went ahead, and after he had got about a hundred yards, 

 I slipped one of the merlins. The hoopoe, on seeing it, was no longer 

 the slow good-for-nothing of a minute ago. Up he went, as only a 

 hoopoe, a lark or a roller can rise, almost straight up for the 

 first couple of hundred feet and then in long spirals and seemingly 

 ever so much faster than the little falcon, which at first got left 

 behind, but then gained steadily, till both birds looked more like 

 butterflies than birds. Now the falcon has at last got above and 

 the hoopoe drops like a stone for the tree it Las just left. Down too 

 comes the falcon, and just as you think she has got the hoopoe, the 

 stone once more becomes a butterfly, the wings suddenly open, the 



