Outrun and out-jump any of my gauche
playmates, even those who were three or four years older than myself.
Nevertheless, these games - horse-racing, sham fights, and ostrich-
hunting, and the like - gave me no abiding satisfaction; they were no
sooner over than I would go back, almost with a sense of relief, to my
solitary rambles and bird-watching, and to wishing that the day would
come when my masterful brother would allow me to use a gun and
practise the one sport of wild-duck shooting I desired.
That was soon to come, and will form the subject of the ensuing
chapter.
CHAPTER XXI
WILD-FOWLING ADVENTURES
My sporting brother and the armoury - I attend him on his shooting
expeditions - Adventure with Golden Plover - A morning after Wild Duck -
Our punishment - I learn to shoot - My first gun - My first wild duck - My
ducking tactics - My gun's infirmities - Duck-shooting with a
blunderbus - Ammunition runs out - An adventure with Rosy-bill Duck -
Coarse gunpowder and home-made shot - The war danger comes our way - We
prepare to defend the house - The danger over and my brother leaves
home.
I have said I was not allowed to shoot before the age of ten, but the
desire had come long before that; I was no more than seven when I used
to wish to be a big, or at all events a bigger, boy, so that, like my
brother, I too might carry a gun and shoot big wild birds. But he said
"No" very emphatically, and there was an end of it.
He had virtually made himself the owner of all the guns and weapons
generally in the house. These included three fowling-pieces, a rifle,
an ancient Tower musket with a flint-lock - doubtless dropped from the
dead hands of a slain British soldier in one of the fights in Buenos
Ayres in 1807 or 1808; a pair of heavy horse pistols, and a ponderous,
formidable-looking old blunderbuss, wide at the mouth as a tea-cup
saucer. His, too, were the swords. To our native neighbours this
appeared an astonishingly large collection of weapons, for in those
days they possessed no fire-arm except, in some rare instances, a
carbine, brought home by a runaway soldier and kept concealed lest the
authorities should get wind of it.
As the next best thing to doing the shooting myself, I attended my
brother in his expeditions, to hold his horse or to pick up and carry
the birds, and was deeply grateful to him for allowing me to serve him
in this humble capacity. We had some exciting adventures together. One
summer day he came rushing home to get his gun, having just seen an
immense flock of golden plover come down at a spot a mile or so from
home.
