256 THE RED-CRESTED POCHARD. 
see that they were all Red-crests. I had now got into deeper 
water, and went as hard as I could manage without splashing, 
but they swam steadily away, and I must have gone fully half 
a mile before I had gained 100 yards on them. Still they had 
not shown the smallest signs of suspicion (and I knew their 
ways well), but were swimming gaily on ex masse, head to wind 
as they often will on cold windy mornings. On I went; I had 
a long heavy English swivel, carrying a pound of shot (No. 1 
I had in) ; there were between two and three thousand of them 
as closely packed as they could swim. I began to bet with 
myself that I should not get less than one hundred ; never had 
I had quite such a chance, taking it all round ; number of fowl 
close packing, rumps all towards me, my best gun. I was cer- 
tainly within seventy yards of the hindermost birds ; I calculated 
to get within about forty yards of these, and fire over their heads 
into the centre of the flock. They were close packed and backs 
to me, so that there was little to gain, and possibly a great deal 
to lose by flushing them. I was within fifty yards when again 
I grounded; had I even then fired at once, I must have made 
a very large bag, but I thought I knew that this was only the 
point of a mound, (a tiny island in most years) and I wasted 
some precious moments struggling to get over it with the 
paddles. The nearest birds must have been seventy yards dis- 
tant, before, seeing I was hard and fast, I snapped an ammunition 
cap on a little pistol I always carried for the purpose, and 
raked them as they rose. The next instant there was a whole 
line of birds fluttering on the water—seven dead, and twenty-one 
winged. I recovered every one of them, but it was noon before 
I bagged the last, and if I had had a desperate hard six hours 
work, I hardly remember any six hours which I more thoroughly 
enjoyed ; and that, although it was nearly a week before, with my 
raw hands, I could touch paddle or quant again. 
When much molested they are shy and very difficult to work, 
but fresh fowl, that have not been before shot at that season, can 
always be easily approached within swivel range, though they usual- 
ly keep just outside the limits of efficiency of ordinary fowling 
pieces. Therewas a deep reach in the Jumna not many miles above 
its junction with the Chambal, where every year I used to find a 
good flock of some forty or fifty of these birds. In an ordinary 
small native ferry boat it was simply impossible, with an 
ordinary charge in an ordinary double gun, to do anything 
with these. Up stream er down stream they could swim every 
bit as fast as it was possible to drive the old tub; and up stream 
and down stream, as you pressed them, they would swim, always 
keeping as nearly as possible about sixty yards from the boat ; 
. but I used each year to get a few by a long shot out of a No. 8 
bore, with double B. Eley’s green cartridge, and one year I 
brought the punt down, and coming down stream on them, 
against wind, bagged nearly half the party. Before the first 
