THE LAST DAY OF WILDFOWLING 447 



failure ; and No. 2 failed likewise. Before daybreak we 

 were out again at the "morning-flight," but though we 

 saw plenty of fowl, with a fair show of geese, not a 

 single shot rewarded a two hours' vigil, and at 9 a.m. 

 we returned a second time empty-handed (and empty 

 elsewhere) to breakfast. Such, in plain fact, is but the 

 common luck of coast wildfowling — the most difficult, 

 uncertain, yet withal one of the most exciting of all our 

 British sports. It is amusing to read of hecatombs 

 slaughtered on paper, and still more so to see the lightsome 

 mood in which the undertaking is often essayed by 

 "'prentice hands" ; but after years of practice the writer 

 can confidently state that, though patient, dogged per- 

 severance and skill will from time to time reap a due 

 reward in gratifying success, yet there is no royal road 

 thereto, nor on salt water will duck-shooting and shooting 

 ducks ever become synonymous terms. 



To return to our narrative. It is still only 10 a.m., 

 and there remain to us several hours in which to avert 

 the disaster of an empty bag : so we start on our third 

 essay. The tide being now about dead low, the field 

 of operations is restricted to the deep-water channels 

 which intersect the mud-flats. These vast expanses of 

 ooze- — too soft to carry a man, too solid to float a punt — 

 thus, through the action of the tides, afford a safe asylum 

 to the fowl, where twice every day they can for several 

 hours feed and rest in peace, secure from man and all 

 his works. At first luck seemed about to dawn upon us, 

 for in the channels we got a pair of scaup-duck and a 

 grebe with the small gun. Then, the current changed 

 again. As the tide flowed over the mud, we observed 

 that a number of mallards had remained "inside" to feed 

 on that luxuriant sea-grass— Zostera marina — which now 



