SPORTING ABILITY DEPRECIATED. 319 



The village near which they were encamped was 

 quite in the plain, at a considerable distance from 

 the hills ; and the country in the immediate vicinity 

 was singularly deficient in small game, at least 

 Mr. Manuel so averred. He had been entrusted by 

 Mackenzie with a gun for the purpose of bagging 

 whatever he came across, which might be fit for the 

 table, but returned in the evening empty-handed. 

 He had promised Sheik Hussein a peafowl for his 

 own private delectation, and, to render it lawful 

 food, had taken with him a Mussulman servant to 

 do the needful when it was shot. Disappointed in 

 his hopes of a hearty supper, Sheik Hussein expressed 

 himself as having no confidence in the sporting 

 abilities of his fellow-bootlair, and broadly hinted 

 that his ill success was attributable, more to the 

 inexpertness of the sportsman than to any lack of 

 game. This nearly led to a row between the worthy 

 pair. But the old Mussulman was so impenetrably 

 stolid, and so firmly persuaded that lie must be in 

 the right, that all the energetic bile and voluble 

 protestations of the excitable Portuguese were 

 quite lost on him. The latter was obliged at last to 

 calm himself, without having elicited any more con- 

 vincing argument than was contained in a recom- 

 mendation to try bows and arrows the next time he 

 essayed to kill game. 



