MAIWA'S REVENGE

MAIWA'S REVENGE




I--GOBO STRIKES

One day--it was about a week after Allan Quatermain told me his story
of the "Three Lions," and of the moving death of Jim-Jim--he and I were
walking home together on the termination of a day's shooting. He owned
about two thousand acres of shooting round the place he had bought in
Yorkshire, over a hundred of which were wood. It was the second year of
his occupation of the estate, and already he had reared a very fair head
of pheasants, for he was an all-round sportsman, and as fond of shooting
with a shot-gun as with an eight-bore rifle. We were three guns that
day, Sir Henry Curtis, Old Quatermain, and myself; but Sir Henry was
obliged to leave in the middle of the afternoon in order to meet
his agent, and inspect an outlying farm where a new shed was wanted.
However, he was coming back to dinner, and going to bring Captain Good
with him, for Brayley Hall was not more than two miles from the Grange.

We had met with very fair sport, considering that we were only
going through outlying cover for cocks. I think that we had killed
twenty-seven, a woodcock and a leash of partridges which we secured
out of a driven covey. On our way home there lay a long narrow spinney,
which was a very favourite "lie" for woodcocks, and generally held a
pheasant or two as well.

"Well, what do you say?" said old Quatermain, "shall we beat through
this for a finish?"

I assented, and he called to the keeper who was following with a little
knot of beaters, and told him to beat the spinney.

"Very well, sir," answered the man, "but it's getting wonderful dark,
and the wind's rising a gale. It will take you all your time to hit a
woodcock if the spinney holds one."

"You show us the woodcocks, Jeffries," answered Quatermain quickly, for
he never liked being crossed in anything to do with sport, "and we will
look after shooting them."

The man turned and went rather sulkily. I heard him say to the
under-keeper, "He's pretty good, the master is, I'm not saying he isn't,
but if he kills a woodcock in this light and wind, I'm a Dutchman."

I think that Quatermain heard him too, though he said nothing. The wind
was rising every minute, and by the time the beat begun it blew big
guns. I stood at the right-hand corner of the spinney, which curved
round somewhat, and Quatermain stood at the left, about forty paces from
me. Presently an old cock pheasant came rocketing over me, looking as
though the feathers were being blown out of his tail. I missed him clean
with the first barrel, and was never more pleased with myself in my life
than when I doubled him up with the second, for the shot was not an
easy one. In the faint light I could see Quatermain nodding his head in
approval, when through the groaning of the trees I heard the shouts of
the beaters, "Cock forward, cock to the right." Then came a whole volley
of shouts, "Woodcock to the right," "Cock to the left," "Cock over."

I looked up, and presently caught sight of one of the woodcocks coming
down the wind upon me like a flash. In that dim light I could not follow
all his movements as he zigzagged through the naked tree-tops; indeed I
could see him when his wings flitted up. Now he was passing me--_bang_,
and a flick of the wing, I had missed him; _bang_ again. Surely he was
down; no, there he went to my left.

"Cock to you," I shouted, stepping forward so as to get Quatermain
between me and the faint angry light of the dying day, for I wanted to
see if he would "wipe my eye." I knew him to be a wonderful shot, but I
thought that cock would puzzle him.

I saw him raise his gun ever so little and bend forward, and at that
moment out flashed two woodcocks into the open, the one I had missed to
his right, and the other to his left.

At the same time a fresh shout arose of, "Woodcock over," and looking
down the spinney I saw a third bird high up in the air, being blown
along like a brown and whirling leaf straight over Quatermain's head.
And then followed the prettiest little bit of shooting that I ever saw.
The bird to the right was flying low, not ten yards from the line of
a hedgerow, and Quatermain took him first because he would become
invisible the soonest of any. Indeed, nobody who had not his hawk's eyes
could have seen to shoot at all. But he saw the bird well enough to kill
it dead as a stone. Then turning sharply, he pulled on the second bird
at about forty-five yards, and over he went.