INDIAN DUCKS AND THEIR ALLIES. 353 



with reference to your bore and charge. A little too far you would, 

 perhaps, hit a score without bagging one ; a little too near and you kill 

 one or two outright, and though you perhaps get two or three more as 

 they rise, that is all ; but if you have a good heavy duckgun, 

 say No. 8 bore, with two ounces of A. A , and fire at about 50 

 yards, you will rarely get less than eight out of a good large flock 

 of geese (and I have got as many as sixteen) with the first shot, 

 besides a brace or so more, with green cartridge, as they rise." 



They are not much of a hand at diving and give more trouble when 

 wounded by fluttering and struggling along out of shot. Of course they 

 do dive, and pretty quickly when hard pressed, but they cannot stay 

 under water for any length of time, nor do they ever hold on to weeds 

 below the surface of the water, as do many ducks, and so avoid the sports- 

 man. They soon rise after diving, and seldom far from where they enter 

 the water, so that they can be easily shot on appearing. Hume says 

 that he has seen one goose taken off by a crocodile ; but if he had shot 

 more on the tidal waters on the Bengal side, where the snub-nosed, man- 

 eating brute has his abode, I am sure he would have seen many a fat 

 goose and delicate duck disappear down their wide maws. Any big bird 

 not recovered almost as soon as shot, is just as likely to form a " mug- 

 ger's " dinner as it is to form that of the person shooting it. Although 

 bad or rather indifferent divers, they are very good swimmers, and a 

 broken-winged bird gets along the surface of the water with great 

 rapidity. On the wing they are very swift when once started, and are 

 very active and graceful as well. They fly, as every one knows, in 

 the form of a V, generally one with a very obtuse point and often with 

 one wing much longer than the other. They are noisy birds and 

 their cacklings and cries and trumpets are, on ordinary occasions, far 

 from soul-stirring, but, as Hume says, when on the wing, high up, their 

 loud trumpeting calls are very sonorous and musical. Especially is 

 this the case, when, late in the evening, or in the very early dawn, the 

 sportsman, crouched low in some ambush, waits eagerly for the wel- 

 come sound that tells of the approach of his game. To me this form of 

 sport is very fascinating for an hour or so, though I admit that it requires 

 great patience, as it is often a long wait between the flocks as they 

 come within reach, and often the temper is tried by the persistent way 



