A Sportsman at Large 227 



a sporting friend, who offered to bet me " a pony " that I 

 would not bag fifty couples to my own gun in a single day. 

 Now I figured that this was easy money, so immediately 

 accepted the wager. 



The very next day I staited off with Hassanein & Co. and 

 a whole army of beaters. I began operations about a mile 

 wide of the Mena House, and was soon busy on my mission 

 of slaughter. Everything went well up to the time when 

 we knocked off for rest and refreshment under the locust 

 trees. I had by then thirty-seven couples of quail, so I 

 began to figure out how I should invest that twenty-five 

 pounds. When we started again, the little birds came quickly 

 to hand. These " gyppies " are wonders at marking a fallen 

 quail ; but in the lentils, beans and other dense-growing 

 cereals a great many were necessarily overlooked. 



By and by I became conscious of a dense gloom which was 

 overshadowing the heavens. The blazing sun had dis- 

 appeared, and I could see that the natives were gazing appre- 

 hensively at the overcast sky. All of a sudden the clouds 

 opened, and a terrific downpour descended. Such a pheno- 

 menon was almost an unknown thing during the dry season ; 

 consequently my dusky army took it as a portent of impend- 

 ing doom. One and all gathered their flowing garments about 

 them, took to their heels, and scampered for all they were worth 

 to the native village about a mile distant, leaving me in 

 solitary grandeur, planted in the middle of the plain. I 

 had counted up the tally to this point, and made out that 

 there were just forty- three couples in the bag. 



Drenched to the skin, I made my way sloppily on the line 

 of retreat of my routed army, but on arrival at the village 

 I utterly failed to induce more than three or four of the more 

 venturesome beaters to renew the attack. These were only 

 able to spring an occasional bird, for the quail evidently 

 objected to risking flight under the damp circumstances ; 

 so it happened that when " Time " was called I found myself 

 three couples short of the stipulated tally ; whereby I lost 

 my bet and caught an infernally bad cold, which did not 

 leave me until we were well on our way up the Nile. 



Again we made our first stop at Wast a. Here the Sheikh 



15* 



