TOM DRAWS VISIT TO PINE BROOK. 191 



an idea that he could possibly have killed one ; for he had 

 turned already quite round in his tracks, to shoot the first bird, 

 and the others had risen wild, in the first place, and were now 

 forty yards off at the least ; but quick as thought he wheeled 

 again, cocking his second barrel in the very act of turning, and 

 sooner almost than I could imagine the possibility of his even 

 catching sight of them, a second snipe was fluttering down 

 wing-tipped. 



" Beautiful, beautiful indeed," I cried, involuntarily ; " the 



rickest and the cleanest double-shot I have seen in many a 

 y-" 



"It warnt.so darned slow, no how," replied Tom, somewhat 

 crest-fallen, as he re-loaded his huge demi-cannon. 



" Slow ! you old heathen ! if you could shoot better than a 

 boy five years old, we should have had three birds I could 

 have got two of those last just as well as not, if you had 

 knocked the first clown like a Christian sportsman but look ! 

 look at those devils," Harry went on, pointing toward the birds, 

 which had gone off, and at which he had been gazing all the 

 time ; " confound them, they're going to drum !" 



And so indeed they were ; and for the first time in my life I 

 beheld a spectacle, which I had heard of indeed, but never had 

 believed fully, till my own eyes now witnessed it. The two 

 birds, which had been flushed, mounted up ! up ! scaling the 

 sky in short small circles, till they were quite as far from this 

 dull earth, as the lark, when " at heaven's gate he sings " and 

 then dropt plumb down, as it would seem, fifty feet in an in- 

 stant, with a strange drumming sound, which might be heard 

 for a mile or more. Then up they soared again, and again re- 

 peated their manoeuvre ; while at each repetition of the sound 

 another and another bird flew up from every part of the wide 

 meadow, and joined those in mid ether ; till there must have 

 been, at the least reckoning, forty snipe soaring and drumming 

 within the compass of a mile, rendering the whole air vocal 

 with that strange quivering hum, which has been stated by 

 some authors and among these by the ingenious and observant 

 Gilbert White to be ventriloquous ; although it is now pretty 

 generally and probably with justice conceded to be the 

 effect of a vibratory motion of the quill feathers set obliquely, 

 so as to make the air whistle through them. For above an. 

 hour did this wild work continue ; not a bird descending from 

 its " bad eminence," but, on the contrary, each one that we 



