208 WILD-FOWLING AFLOAT BY NIGHT 



fowl are usually fired at by night are much shorter 

 than by day, this size will perhaps be found the most 

 serviceable. 



In the foregoing pages I have endeavoured to 

 give some hints and suggestions in regard to the 

 practice of night-punting, and by way of illustration I 

 am tempted to narrate briefly the incidents of one 

 of those memorable nights with fowl which at rare 

 intervals fall to the lot of the fowler. I quote from 

 my ' Wild-fowl Diary,' and I should state that the 

 events described occurred on the French coast, where 

 I had been an annual visitor for nearly ten years. 



' It is the night of January i, 1893. The sky 

 overhead is clear and thickly bespangled with bright, 

 twinkling stars, whilst a nipping keenness in the air 

 most surely portends the continuance of a frost which 

 has now lasted nearly three weeks. The scene is 

 one of great beauty, and its features are familiar to 

 most wild-fowlers. The moon has just risen slowly 

 above the horizon and cast rfer soft radiant beams 

 over the rippling sea. Outside her silvery path of 

 light a few small islands loom up dark and dreary- 

 looking above the sea-level, whilst around the bay the 

 shore lies enwrapped in a crystal-white girdle of 

 snow and cats'-ice. From the top of a rocky pro- 

 montory, where we take our stand, we can see and hear 



