“A joke of mine, when I knocked down a bird the other morning,” said Sniggs:  “you must know I was out early, and had just brought down my bird, when leaping into the adjoining field to pick it up, a bird-catcher, who had spread his nets on the dewy grass, walked right up to me.”

“I’ve a visper for you, Sir,” says he, as cool as a cucumber; “I don’t vish to be imperlite, but next time you shoots a bird vot I’ve brought to my call, I’ll shoot you into a clay-pit, that’s all!”

“And pray what did you say, Sniggs?” asked Jack Saggers.  “Say?—­nothing! but I looked unutterable things, and—­shouldering my piece—­walked off!”

The “Crack-shots.”  No.  II.

“Sniggs’s rencontre with the bird-catcher reminds me of Tom Swivel’s meeting with the Doctor,” observed Smart.

“Make a report,” cried Jack Saggers.

“Well, you must know, that I had lent him my piece for a day’s shooting; and just as he was sauntering along by a dead wall near Hampstead, looking both ways at once for a quarry (for he has a particular squint), a stout gentleman in respectable black, and topped by a shovel-hat, happened to be coming in the opposite direction.  With an expression of terror, the old gentleman drew himself up against the unyielding bricks, and authoritatively extending his walking-stick, addressed our sportsman in an angry tone, saying:  ’How dare you carry a loaded gun pointed at people’s viscera, you booby?’ Now Tom is a booby, and no mistake, and so dropping his under jaw and staring at the reverend, he answered:  ’I don’t know vot you mean by a wiserar.  I never shot a wiserar!’”

“Devilish good!” exclaimed Saggers; and, as a matter of course, everybody laughed.

Passing about the bottle, the club now became hilarious and noisy; when the hammer of the president rapped them to order, and knocked down Sniggs for a song, who, after humming over the tune to himself, struck up the following: 

CHAUNT

When the snow’s on the ground and the trees are all bare,
And rivers and gutters are turned into ice,
The sportsman goes forth to shoot rabbit or hare,
And gives them a taste of his skill in a trice. 
Bang! bang! goes his Joe,
And the bird’s fall like snow,
And he bags all he kills in a trice.

Chorus. 
Bang! bang! goes his Joe,
And the bird’s fall like snow,
And he bags all he kills in a trice.

II. 
If he puts up a partridge or pheasant or duck,
He marks him, and wings him, and brings him to earth;
He let’s nothing fly—­but his piece—­and good luck
His bag fills with game and his bosom with mirth.

Bang! bang! goes his Joe,
And the bird’s fall like snow,
And good sport fills his bosom with mirth.

Chorus. 
Bang! bang! et. etc.

III. 
When at night he unbends and encounters his pals,
How delighted he boasts of the sport he has had;
While a kind of round game’s on the board, and gals
Are toasted in bumpers by every lad. 
And Jack, Jim, and Joe
Give the maid chaste as snow
That is true as a shot to her lad!