106 THE JERSEY COAST. 
has noticed how many fell to the first. Dropping 
back to his position of concealment, he recommences 
whistling, and the poor things, forgetting their fright 
and anxious to know why their friends alighted amid 
a roar like thunder, return to the fatal spot, and 
again give the fortunate sportsman a chance for his 
reloaded gun. 
It was for such glorious sport as this, with fair 
promise of success—for the flight was on, as the say- 
ing is, when the snipe are moving—that I prepared 
myself the next morning. Rising at earliest day- 
break, a friend, the gunner, and myself sallied out to 
the blind, and having set out our stools, possessed 
our souls in patience for what might follow. A blind 
is another ingenious invention of the devil—as per- 
sonified by a bayman, in pursuit of wild fowl—and 
is constructed by planting bushes thickly in a circle 
round a bench. Seated upon this bench and con- 
cealed from the suspicious eyes of the snipe by the 
dense foliage of the bayberry bushes, the sportsman, 
in comparative comfort, awaits his prey. In less 
civilized localities he hides himself among the long 
sedge grass, or scoops out a hole in the sand and 
lies at length upon a waterproof blanket. 
The wind had hauled, in nautical language, to the 
south’ard and west’ard, and the sun’s rays driving 
aside the hazy clouds, illuminated the eastern sky 
with fiery glory. The land and water, dim with the 
heavy night fog, stretched out in broad, undefined 
outline, and the heavens seemed close down upon 
the earth. Through the hazy atmosphere and slug- 
