I06 DAHLAK 



latter, which are smaller and thinner than our own, but no 

 less tasty. We had one weapon for the job, my short-barrelled 

 22 Beretta. Cecco's Browning was out of action after an 

 encounter with a heron. He had only woimded the bird 

 (Priscilla, like a good English girl could not bear to see 

 animals, even fish, suffer, and expected the coup de grace to be 

 administered at once) and was intent upon finishing it off 

 with the butt. But instead of striking the heron, he hit a 

 rock, and the butt flew into the air in two pieces, the various 

 springs, nuts and bolts and screws flying off in all directions. 



Trying to kill a dove with the bullet of a 22 was rather 

 like putting a camel through the eye of a needle wearing 

 boxing gloves. We had to get up to not more than ten yards 

 distance, in silence, doubled-up, holding our breath, sliding 

 on the difficult ground and scratched by a hundred thorns. 

 The bird stood perched on the branch, in the company of its 

 friends, all of them proudly sticking their chests out. If the 

 approach had been perfect, an accurate shot could bring it 

 down cleanly. But if it flew off before, or escaped the first 

 shot, it became suspicious and would not be so easily taken 

 after alighting on another nearby acacia. Gigi was a past- 

 master at turtle dove shooting. His highly refined art lay in 

 a long furtive, earth-slide like a cobra. Very often he beat 

 me by one or two birds because I let impatience get the better 

 of me and indulged my academic taste for a long shot which 

 usually made holes in the leaves. In all, out of ten shots we 

 managed an average of four turtles. These were quite 

 sufficient for our evening meal. 



Turtle doves were our ordinary prey, and buzzards, 

 vultures, kites, and ravens fell victim from time to time for 

 our ornithological collection of resident avifauna, but more 

 than anything else we searched for gazelles and Arabian 

 bustard. 



