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 thing to see.  I did quite well here, nearly, but not altogether, as well as Lord Ragnall himself, though that is saying a great deal, for he was a lovely shot.

“Bravo!” he said at the end of the beat.  “I believe you have got a chance of winning your L5, after all.”

When, however, at luncheon, more than an hour later, I found that I was thirty pheasants behind my adversary, I shook my head, and so did everybody else.  On the whole, that luncheon, of which we partook in a keeper’s house, was a very pleasant meal, though Van Koop talked so continuously and in such a boastful strain that I saw it irritated our host and some of the other gentlemen, who were very pleasant people.  At last he began to patronize me, asking me how I had been getting on with my “elephant-potting” of late years.

I replied, “Fairly well.”

“Then you should tell our friends some of your famous stories, which I promise I won’t contradict,” he said, adding:  “You see, they are different from us, and have no experience of big-game shooting.”

“I did not know that you had any, either, Sir Junius,” I answered, nettled.  “Indeed, I thought I remembered your telling me in Africa that the only big game you had ever shot was an ox sick with the red-water.  Anyway, shooting is a business with me, not an amusement, as it is to you, and I do not talk shop.”

At this he collapsed amid some laughter, after which Scroope, the most loyal of friends, began to repeat exploits of mine till my ears tingled, and I rose and went outside to look at the weather.

It had changed very much during luncheon.  The fair promise of the morning had departed, the sky was overcast, and a wind, blowing in strong gusts, was rising rapidly, driving before it occasional scurries of snow.

“My word,” said Lord Ragnall, who had joined me, “the Lake covert—­that’s our great stand here, you know—­will take some shooting this afternoon.  We ought to kill seven hundred pheasants in it with this team, but I doubt if we shall get five.  Now, Mr. Quatermain, I am going to stand Sir Junius Fortescue and you back in the covert, where you will have the best of it, as a lot of pheasants will never face the lake against this wind.  What is more, I am coming with you, if I may, as six guns are enough for this beat, and I don’t mean to shoot any more to-day.”