12 RAMBLES AFTER SPORT. 



went again like a man, sloshing and kicking about, 

 my gun-barrels, nose, mouth, and eyes full of Poole 

 mud. 



Don^t laugh. Have you ever been on mud-pattens? 

 If not, don^t go. A ^^hog on ice^^ is popularly supposed 

 to be an independent cuss, because if he can't stand — 

 why, he can lie down; but Vm blessed if he could 

 on mud. 



After a long chase Bill shot the teal, and he con- 

 siderately helped me to the punt — in fact, he carried me 

 there. Fan meanwhile was having quite a " high old 

 time of it '^ with the one in the water. It dived down 

 one way and came up another, till the bitch was perfectly 

 bewildered ; as the water was bitterly cold, I knocked 

 the bird on the head with my scull. 



And now it was make haste for the evening flight, as 

 we had some way to go to the sand-banks. So 

 leaving Ted to take charge of the smack back to 

 anchorage, I set off in the punt with Bill, taking the 

 long single with half a dozen cartridges, and the heavy 

 double, not forgetting another weapon (which of course 

 no sportsman goes without) — a pocket pistol, loaded, 

 not with leaden pills, but Irish dew; not but that 

 bowls over many a pretty lad sometimes. It is not quite 

 so powerful as that peculiar drink in California called a 

 ^' forty-rodder,^' so named from the fact of no man being 

 able to walk forty rods after partaking of it without 

 tumbling in the gutter. 



On arriving at the sand-banks, we were lucky enough 

 to find two good stands unoccupied, the only other 

 person near us being " Old Simon,'' a well-known Poole 

 gunner of fifty years' standing. He had a single-barrelled 

 gun, I should say without exaggeration six feet long ; it 



