142 A MEDLEY OF SPORT 



by the aid of my binoculars, I saw a company of mixed 

 fowl resting, and also a grey, matchlike object moving 

 across wind slowly but surely towards the apparently 

 unsuspicious birds. One of the local gunners was setting 

 to the fowl in his narrow single-handed punt. 



Thinking it not improbable that a stray mallard, teal 

 or widgeon might be harbouring in some of the deep, 

 wind-sheltered runnels which intersected the salt- 

 marshes, I determined to walk across the latter until 

 arriving at an old gunning-pit, wherein I purposed 

 waiting for any birds which might fly within shot after 

 they had been flooded off the banks by the incoming tide. 



Pulling my thigh-boots well up I began my trudge, 

 and was in the act of crossing a muddy little gut when I 

 heard the " scape, scape " of a snipe, and turning quickly 

 I saw the " long-bill " screwing up the water-course. 

 That snipe was too quick for me, and before 

 I could get my gun up he had disappeared round 

 a bend of the gut and passed from my sight for ever 

 behind the sea-wall. Then for some little time I met 

 with nothing wearing feathers beyond a small trip of 

 dunlins, which I did not consider worthy a cartridge. 

 As I neared a small tidal creek, however, which was just 

 beginning to fill with water, and which had to be crossed 

 in a rotten old tub of a ferry-boat tied up to a running 

 mooring ere the gunning-pit was reached, I heard the 

 whistling call of a teal, and then, to my delight, I saw 

 some fifty or sixty of those delightful little duck paddling 

 on the edge of the tide some 80 yards higher up the 



