100 Unexplored Spain 
thereby, together with courtesy and fairdealing, the erstwhile 
insurgents in brief time became the best of friends. 
For the moment, however, we found ourselves hutless, and 
constrained to encamp two leagues away on the distant terra 
jirma, this involving an extra couple of hours’ work in the small 
dark hours. 
As before 4 a.M. we rode, beneath a pouring rain, “ path- 
finding,” in blind darkness across slimy ooze and shallow—not to 
mention deeper channels that reached to the girths,—a nightjar 
circled round our cavaleade —true, a very small event, but 
recorded because it is quite against the rules for a nightjar to be 
here in December. Only three guns braved this adventure, and 
by 5.45 we occupied each his allotted post. These could not be 
called comfortable, since the positions in which we had to spend 
the next six or eight hours were quite six inches deep in water, 
and the only covert a circle of samphire-bush barely a foot above 
water-level—that being the utmost height allowed by the keen 
sight of flighting fowl. Hach man had an armful of cut brush- 
wood to kneel on, besides another bundle on which cartridge- 
bags might be supported clear of the water.’ 
Rain descended in sheets. Before it was fully light—indeed 
the average human being of diurnal habit would probably swear 
it was still quite dark—the swish of wings overhead foretold 
the coming day. Then with a roar the whole marisma bursts 
into life as though by clock-work. Thrice-a-minute, and oftener, 
sped bunches of duck right in one’s face, at times a hurricane of 
wings. Not seeing them till quite close in, but one barrel can 
be emptied each time, yet soon a score of beautiful pintail and 
wigeon formed the basis of a pile. 
Behind, in the gloom to westward, a sense of movement has 
developed. At first it might have been but the drift of night-clouds, 
but as light broadens, form and colour evolve and the phenomenon 
shapes itself into vast bodies of flamingoes, sprawling, as it were, on 
the face of heaven in writhing, scintillating confusion. After infinite 
evolutions, the amorphous mass resolves itself into order; files 
and marshalled phalanxes serry the sky—those weird wildfowl, 
each with some six foot of rigid extension, advancing direct upon 
our posts. Their armies have spent the night on the broad 
1 This was in earlier days. Later on we developed a flotilla of flat-bottomed canoes 
expressly adapted to this service. A photo of one of these is annexed. 
