^66 On Gun Accidents. 



is also true that he does not run half the risk which that man does- 

 who shoots in company : and I have now become so accustomed to 

 be out alone, that I always shoot nervously in a party. No power 

 on earth will ever now induce me to go out in a boat, if there is 

 more than one gun in it, I have just said no man, perhaps, has 

 had more serious warnings than myself, and I speak the truth. I 

 have had guns go off in my hand, when I least expected it j and 

 though I have escaped myself, had another man been with me, I 

 perhaps should have had a human life to answer for. I had a habit 

 in the bush (where one is of necessity required to have a loaded 

 gun in the hut or tent) of setting my gun at the head of my bed 

 (instead of, as I always do now, laying it on the bed during the 

 day), to be ready to catch up at a moment's notice. Three or four 

 times, when I have been taking it up quickly for a snap shot 

 outside the tent, the gun has gone off by the hammer catching the 

 edge of the bed. I was one dark night in England coming home 

 from pheasant-shooting on a fidgety mare. I got off to pick up a 

 glow-worm which was shining by the road side, and, in getting on 

 again, somehow or other, the gun went off in my left hand, and 

 the charge must have passed pretty close to my head, for my hat 

 was blown off. I was both deaf and blind for some time after, and 

 my face, when I got home (the mare ran away, and never stopped 

 till she pulled up at my own gate), was as black as a powder- 

 monkey's. Now these casualties, as well as a dozen more which I 

 could mention, were certainly caused by the hammer resting on the 

 nipple. 



I once recollect crawling on to some black duck through a rough 

 tussocky plain in Austraha, wriggHng along, like a snake, close to 

 the ground, pulling my gun after me — when bang off it went, and 

 the charge ploughed up the ground just by my cheek. Now I was 

 certain in this case the hammer was down upon the nipple. In 

 these instances I have had no one to blame but myself. However, 

 more than once has my life been placed in jeopardy through guns 

 in the hands of others; and once I had so narrow an escape 



