“I fear that you will be disappointed,” I said nervously.

“Oh, no, I sha’n’t,” he answered.  “I tell you frankly that if only you could have a season’s practice, in my opinion you would make the best pheasant shot of the lot of us.  At present you don’t quite understand the ways of the birds, that’s all; also those guns are strange to you.  Have a glass of cherry brandy; it will steady your nerves.”

I drank the cherry brandy, and presently off we went.  The covert we were going to shoot, into which we had been driving pheasants all the morning, must have been nearly a mile long.  At the top end it was broad, narrowing at the bottom to a width of about two hundred yards.  Here it ran into a horse-shoe shaped piece of water that was about fifty yards in breadth.  Four of the guns were placed round the bow of this water, but on its farther side, in such a position that the pheasants should stream over them to yet another covert behind at the top of a slope, Van Koop and I, however, were ordered to take our places, he to the right and I to the left, about seventy yards up the tongue in little glades in the woodland, having the lake to our right and our left respectively.  I noticed with dismay that we were so set that the guns below us on its farther side could note all that we did or did not do; also that a little band of watchers, among whom I recognized my friend the gunsmith, were gathered in a place where, without interfering with us, they could see the sport.  On our way to the boat, however, which was to row us across the water, an incident happened that put me in very good spirits and earned some applause.

I was walking with Lord Ragnall, Scroope and Charles, about sixty yards clear of a belt of tall trees, when from far away on the other side of the trees came a cry of “Partridges over!” in the hoarse voice of the red-waistcoated Jenkins, who was engaged in superintending the driving in of some low scrub before he joined his army at the top of the covert.

“Look out, Mr. Quatermain, they are coming this way,” said Lord Ragnall, while Charles thrust a loaded gun into my hand.

Another moment and they appeared over the tree-tops, a big covey of them in a long, straggling line, travelling at I know not what speed, for a fierce gust from the rising gale had caught them.  I fired at the first bird, which fell at my feet.  I fired again, and another fell behind me.  I snatched up the second gun and killed a third as it passed over me high up.  Then, wheeling round, I covered the last retreating bird, and lo! it too fell, a very long shot indeed.

“By George!” said Scroope, “I never saw that done before,” while Ragnall stared and Charles whistled.

But now I will tell the truth and expose all my weakness.  The second bird was not the one I aimed at.  I was behind it and caught that which followed.  And in my vanity I did not own up, at least not till that evening.