278 THE COVERTS 



from the mulligatawny soup to the smothering in 

 onions, with a sauce a la Soubise. No animal affords 

 finer shooting practice the only drawback for novices 

 is that he gets them into the habit of snap-shooting, 

 and he is at his best and brightest among the sandhills 

 rolling down to the beach with these scattered patches 

 of the prickly gorse the rabbits have been cropping 

 into fantastic forms. The dazed rabbits emerging at 

 the end of a driven covert are mobbed and shot down 

 like sheep. The rabbits bolting across a narrow ride 

 demand as swift calculation of the chances as if you 

 were firing at a streak of lightning. Let skilful shots 

 say what they will, there must still be a large element 

 of luck there. But in the sandhills with their hollows 

 and the patches of whin, with the rank bent grass in 

 which the colonists bask through the day, and which 

 sometimes is thick enough to cover the scuttle to the 

 burrow, both the gun and the quarry have tolerably 

 fair play, though doubtless an expert would lay odds 

 on his shooting. Then there is the exhilaration of the 

 exercise, with its strain on the back sinews : the 

 innocent intoxication of the brine-laden breezes, the 

 wide views out to seaward, with the sails and the trails 

 of steamer smoke, the merry clamour of the seagulls 

 swooping overhead, the gabbling and calling of the 

 waders that are foraging below high-water mark, and 

 on the other side the complaining alarm notes of the 

 lapwings, who, though they have got rid of their 

 cherished nurslings months before, are nevertheless as 

 fussy as ever. 



