Black Partridges 15 



seizes the opportunity to spring up with a squarJc 

 from the water's edge. If he had waited till our 

 cartridges had been extracted, his derision would 

 have been justified. As it is, he falls a corpse on 

 the farther margin. The "flask of wine," or 

 whisky diluted with " sparklets," fizzes down 

 hot throats. Don meanwhile, thoroughly pleased 

 with himself, having caught two runners and 

 retrieved the snipe, lies blinking in the water, 

 the eddies above him revealing the gentle oscilla- 

 tions of a pleased tail. 



It was just before this pleasant interlude that 

 the bag had received a notable addition. A 

 bustard got up some way in front, and flapped 

 a devious course for some hundreds of yards, 

 when he went down behind the grass -covered 

 embankment of an ancient canal. " My Christmas 

 dinner, run ! " cried some one. One of us ran, 

 and a lively sense of the awful result of failure 

 lent wings to his shooting-boots. 



It is a pusillanimous bird the bustard. He 

 refuses to "join in the sport." You hurry up to 

 where he has pitched and look wildly about for 

 a bird, conspicuous as an ostrich ; while all the 

 time, with his long neck stretched out along 

 the ground, he is running with the most indecent 

 speed in the direction you least expect. On this 

 occasion the gun was favoured by the embank- 



