1 88 WILD-FOWLING AFLOAT BY NIGHT 



Towards the end of the seventies, fortune favoured 

 me with the friendship of a keen and enthusiastic 

 fowler who possessed all these characteristics in a 

 marked degree. Many were the happy hours we spent 

 together in ' flighting ' the ducks and circumventing 

 the waders and shore birds which haunted the mud- 

 banks of a well-known estuary on the south coast. 

 Of the fascination of fowling with the big gun I was 

 then quite ignorant ; but one November night the 

 chance arose for my initiation, and I gladly availed 

 myself of my friend's offer to accompany him on a 

 cruise in his punt. 



The experiences of that night, though novel to 

 me, were in other respects cheerless in the extreme. 

 Not only did we fail in discovering any audible or 

 visible sign of a duck, widgeon, or teal throughout the 

 length and breadth of those dreary wastes of ooze, 

 but to complete our discomfiture we were subjected 

 to a chilly drizzling rain, which set in soon after we 

 embarked and continued incessantly all night long. 

 For several hours we sought refuge under an old boat 

 turned bottom upwards on the shore, and from these 

 draughty quarters we emerged towards dawn in a 

 more or less bedraggled and pitiable condition. I 

 began to have serious doubts whether the game was 

 really worth the candle; but these memories were 



