324 SPORT IN BENGAL. 



Separating at this point, it was agreed to meet again 

 about noon on the north side of the " jheel," when the pro- 

 vision tender, which was to follow me, should hoist a flag on 

 a pole, and give the signal for breakfast. 



Soon afterwards the firing grew brisk, so that not a 

 moment passed without great numbers of birds passing over 

 or around us, singly and in great clouds, but almost always 

 beyond range, even of the duck-gun ; nor did the sport become 

 very good till we were some distance apart, when I began to 

 pick up rapidly gadwals, red-crested pochards, white-eyes and 

 blue- winged teal ; now by shots at single birds, and then at 

 flocks, the duck-gun making clear lanes through the latter as 

 the ducks rose in clouds before me at long range ; and thus 

 the game went merrily on for two hours, about which time I 

 came to some islets covered with tall grasses and masses of 

 floating weeds, from which plump snipe sprang up within a 

 dozen paces, tempting me to shoot them but in vain, so long 

 as the more coveted game lay before me on the clear water in 

 thousands, giving very long shots indeed, and ofttimes getting 

 off with smaller loss than I could understand ; but after one 

 such with the long gun, I gathered in a harvest of fully a 

 dozen gadwals and pochards, besides crippling others which I 

 failed to retrieve among weeds, the wire cartridge with No. 2 

 shot doing yeoman's service at a hundred yards and over. 



E. now rejoined me, not over-elated with his success, 

 having secured a very modest bag consisting mostly of teal, 

 the ducks proving too coy and wary for him ; but to make up 

 for any deficiency of that sort he brought a wonderful story 

 of an adventure he had had with a rhinoceros ! 



It appeared that as he was silently advancing through 

 some tall grass to get a long shot at pochards lying in open 

 water, he suddenly espied, cautiously nearing his canoe, the 

 black head of a rhino, with its entire body submerged, its 

 horned snout rising and falling as it fed on the tops of the 

 water grasses, and the points of its ears clearly visible behind 

 the horn. E., now out for his first day's sport since arrival in 

 the country, was equal to the momentous occasion, and rapidly 



