high of course, just out of range, but we banged away
merrily at anything inside ninety yards! M. in the boat got within range
of some confiding pochard, and we on shore got a few by flukes. They
kept circling round for a long time as the other tanks in neighbourhood
were almost dried up. Then it got very hot and I for one was glad to get
my back against an aloe for a little shade and concealment, and
sketched, and fired occasionally to be sociable, as a duck came within
say eighty yards. See sketch and the futility of concealment. I thought
it very delightful--the shooting was not too engrossing, the landscape
was charming, and the village life interesting, and the simplicity of
the whole proceeding distinctly amusing. F., one of our party, on the
other side from me kept potting away regularly. He was surrounded with
natives; his ideas as to what was "in shot" were great! Still, he told
me the natives always swore he hit. The duck out here don't seem to mind
small shot at a hundred or two hundred yards more than they do at home!
Pretty white herons sailed round occasionally without fear, and
sometimes I could positively hardly see for grey-green dragon flies
hovering in front; there was one tern, or sea swallow--my favourite
bird; but how came it do you think, so far from the sea?

[Illustration]

Most of the duck had cleared off to other tanks by ten o'clock, so the
fusilade stopped and we returned to the shade of a many-stemmed and
rooted banyan tree where the desert met the sown, and had lunch and
felt quite the old Indian, eating fearfully hot curry pasties and spiced
sandwiches, as per sketch.

My five shooter is quite a novelty here, so I had to take it to bits and
show how it worked, or rather, I began to show how it worked, did
something wrong, and had to take it all to bits on this inauspicious
occasion.

[Illustration]

We shot on languidly till about one, that is, sat in the heat and
occasionally let off a shot at a very wide duck, and another member of
our party took his turn in the boat with a professed oarsmen from the
village who was worse than the first, so we gave up, one by one and
dawdled up to the village, picking up some dead duck on the way. Here is
a jotting of our retriever--a native who slung a bundle of dry pithy
sticks under one arm, waded out, and swam along somehow, with an
overhand stroke, not elegant but fairly effective.--I also made jottings
of buffaloes in the water, all but sub