52 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH. 



advantage, as it prevented the game from seeing any- 

 thing of the hunters, and at the same time rendered 

 their eyes more reflective when exposed to the torch- 

 light. We had even gone so far as to make our pitch- 

 pine torches, and the whole preparation was complete. 

 It was a party of two the Doctor and myself. There 

 would be rather more interest in getting the game 

 alone ; and beside that, Mike's opinion on fire-shooting 

 was well-known, and we knew he would not go with us 

 so constant a hunter scorned so primitive a snare as 

 the one we proposed. The negroes we did not want, 

 for the fewer in a party the better. So, one of us taking 

 a gun, and the other carrying a torch, we left the camp. 



The boys were chuckling together as they watched us 

 go, the dogs howled because they could not go with us, 

 and Mike gave one of his expressive coughs, that said as 

 plainly as words, " Now for it." 



We were soon outside of the glare of the camp-fire, 

 the little creek was crossed, and our torch flashed 

 brightly on the taper trunks of the pine trees, the climb- 

 ing-vines, and the broad-leafed plants that grew by the 

 pools of water. There was no wind, and, walking in the 

 pine woods, there was no sound. Once in a long while, 

 a sand-hill crane, disturbed in his wanderings, would be 

 seen stalking away, with his red head high in air, like a 

 sentry on duty ; or the sudden motion of the under- 

 brush would tell us that some one of the many little 

 harlequins of the wood, that gambol most when men do 

 aleep, had fled from this unusual spectacle of a moving 



