to load with loopers at a pinch. Still, in challenging
Pereira, it was this gun and no other that I determined to use; indeed,
had I not owned it I do not think that I should have ventured on the
match.

As it happened, Mr. Smyth had left me with the rifle a large supply of
specially cast bullets and of the new percussion caps, to say nothing of
some very fine imported powder. Therefore, having ammunition in plenty,
I set to work to practise. Seating myself upon a chair in a deep kloof
near the station, across which rock pigeons and turtle doves were wont
to fly in numbers at a considerable height, I began to fire at them as
they flashed over me.

Now, in my age, I may say without fear of being set down a boaster, that
I have one gift, that of marksmanship, which, I suppose, I owe to some
curious combination of judgment, quickness of eye, and steadiness of
hand. I can declare honestly that in my best days I never knew a man who
could beat me in shooting at a living object; I say nothing of target
work, of which I have little experience. Oddly enough, also, I believe
that at this art, although then I lacked the practice which since has
come to me in such plenty, I was as good as a youth as I have ever been
in later days, and, of course, far better than I am now. This I soon
proved upon the present occasion, for seated there in that kloof, after
a few trials, I found that I could bring down quite a number of even the
swift, straight-flying rock pigeons as they sped over me, and this, be
it remembered, not with shot, but with a single bullet, a feat that many
would hold to be incredible.

So the days passed, and I practised, every evening finding me a little
better at this terribly difficult sport. For always I learned more as
to the exact capacities of my rifle and the allowance that must be made
according to the speed of the bird, its distance, and the complications
of the wind and of the light. During those days, also, I recovered so
rapidly that at the end of them I was almost in my normal condition, and
could walk well with the aid of a single stick.

At length the eventful Thursday came, and about midday--for I lay in bed
late that morning and did not shoot--I drove, or, rather, was driven, in
a Cape cart with two horses to the place known as Groote Kloof or Great
Gully. Over this gorge the wild geese flighted from their "pans" or
feeding grounds on the high lands above, to other pans that lay some
miles below,