THE DROWNED LANDS. 155 



Scipio with a log. Now, altogether — that 's it ! Why, Doctor, you 

 look as though you had high top-boots on ! " 



Never mind, it is clean mud," he replied good-humouredly. 



" Now we are all ready, let us form in a line, and beat down the 

 island regularly," said Jackson, the ardour of the hunt awakening 

 him from much of his listlessness. "Fall in, boys; one of you 

 walk between each of the hunters." 



The long, irregular line being formed, it stretched nearly across 

 the island, and we advanced, sinking in the soft mud occasionally, 

 but oftener finding a sandy bottom, with pools of water. The snipe 

 were abundant ; we could see them sometimes on the ground in 

 couples, on which occasions the Doctor would always fire with 

 pretty certain success. Most frequently they arose singly, uttering 

 their peculiar harsh cry, and were tumbled over by one or other of 

 the party before they had gone five yards, amid the shouts and 

 guffaws of the negroes. 



Lou shot well, after a little practice, and she trod over the flags, 

 with her eye fixed ahead of her, with that earnestness of look that 

 a person attains never so greatly as when watching for upspringing 

 game that he feels confident he can hit. 



" Mark ! " called Scipio, as a snipe launched in the air from 

 our feet, the brown and hazel pointings on his back glittering like 

 soldiers' bayonets at the charge. The first spring he makes seems 

 to toss him twenty feet in air, and then a pause, as he collects his 

 wings to strike out on that erratic swinging motion that is his 

 safety and beauty. He eyes the array of pursuers behind him, and 

 hears their strange talking; he sees before him his accustomed 

 haunts and oozy swales, and hears the rustling of the reeds that 

 shelter his mates. In the pride of swiftness, rings out his exulting 

 cry, the same that had made vocal the great morasses of the 

 Coppermine Eiver, where he was nested, and the same by which, 

 through the ghostly night, in the upper air, from front to rear, had 

 kept in rank the long flight of his kindred in their semi-annual 

 migration — " Escape ! " 



Pang ! rings the clear shot, and over falls the wild bird among 

 the sedge. 



" Golly ! Missa Lou, yah ! ha ! he dead ! " shouted one of the 



