thought it meant a cock pheasant, and was astonished when I saw a
beautiful brown bird with a long beak flitting towards me through the
tops of the oak trees.

"Am I to shoot at that?" I asked.

"Of course. It is a woodcock," answered Scroope.

By this time the brown bird was rocking past me within ten yards. I
fired and killed it, for where it had been appeared nothing but a cloud
of feathers. It was a quick and clever shot, or so I thought. But when
Charles stepped out and picked from the ground only a beak and a head, a
titter of laughter went down the whole line of guns and loaders.

"I say, old chap," said Scroope, "if you will use No. 3 shot, let your
birds get a little farther off you."

The incident upset me so much that immediately afterwards I missed three
easy pheasants in succession, while Van Koop added two to his bag.

Scroope shook his head and Charles groaned audibly. Now that I was not
in competition with his master he had become suddenly anxious that I
should win, for in some mysterious way the news of that bet had spread,
and my adversary was not popular amongst the keeper class.

"Here you come again," said Scroope, pointing to an advancing pheasant.

It was an extraordinarily high pheasant, flushed, I think, outside the
covert by a stop, so high that, as it travelled down the line, although
three guns fired at it, including Van Koop, none of them seemed to touch
it. Then I fired, and remembering Lord Ragnall's advice, far in front.
Its flight changed. Still it travelled through the air, but with the
momentum of a stone to fall fifty yards to my right, dead.

"That's better!" said Scroope, while Charles grinned all over his round
face, muttering:

"Wiped his eye that time."

This shot seemed to give me confidence, and I improved considerably,
though, oddly enough, I found that it was the high and difficult
pheasants which I killed and the easy ones that I was apt to muff. But
Van Koop, who was certainly a finished artist, killed both.

At the next stand Lord Ragnall, who had been observing my somewhat
indifferent performance, asked me to stand back with him behind the
other guns.

"I see the tall ones are your line, Mr. Quatermain," he said, "and you
will get some here."

On this occasion we were placed in a dip between two long coverts which
lay about three hundred yards apart. That which was being beaten proved
full of pheasants, and the shooting of those picked guns was really a
t