Brant Shooting 



This sport, well carried, shall be chronicled. 



— Midsummer Night's Dream. 



So let me chronicle a week's sport — " well carried," 

 I think — on Monomoy Island. A week of atmos- 

 pheric somersaults ; a week of rain, snow, hail, sleet, 

 thunder with vivid lightning, and extreme cold. 

 And yet in spite of the exposure — twice a day wading 

 a thousand yards to our shooting boxes, guided by 

 stakes a hundred yards apart, while we couldn't see 

 from one to the other through the fog or sleeting 

 snow ; then sitting in the box, at times over our knees 

 in water, the waves dashing over us and slapping 

 down the back of our neck, and the thermometer 

 hugging the freezing point, — I say, despite all this, it 

 was a week that is fondly fastened in my memory ; a 

 week full of adventure and novelty ; and a week dur- 

 ing which we breathed any quantity of ozone, and 

 had for our sustenance plenty of superbly prepared 

 sea-food together with a superbly prepared appetite 

 and digestion to handle it. It was also a week of 

 total blank so far as any news of the outside world 

 was concerned. No letters, no newspapers, no tele- 

 grams to side-track our attention or ruffle our tran- 

 quillity. For once business and the shop might go to 



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