At length the time for our departure had arrived, for we intended spending a few days among the big game in the extensive pine-forests which cover the southern extremity of the Coto Doñana. The pack-mules with the baggage being despatched by a direct route, we rode off on an almost summerlike morning, taking a wider course so as to get a "drive" of some of the wooded corrales that lay towards the west. Here, in one of the wildest spots, Manolo placed the line of guns. The writer is posted on a mound of blown sand, one of the many which form the irregular broken country around. The cocked rifle is placed conveniently for instant grasp while one surveys the position and speculates on the likeliest spot for a stag to appear—quickly taking note of the uneven ground, its hillocks and hollows where it will be necessary to enterprise a snap-shot, and again where more deliberate aim may be taken. Every here and there similar mounds present an unbroken view, spots where the driven sand has collected around some stalwart pine, taking various picturesque forms and crowned with the dark green foliage of latest growth.
Presently the sharp crack of a rifle breaks our reverie and gives startling evidence that game is afoot. A few seconds later the patter of galloping feet is heard on the hard sand and the expected quarry bounds across the glen, his antlers thrown back as he scents danger and redoubles his speed. Full in the shoulder strikes the express bullet, stopping his flight and sending him headlong to earth, where a second shot ends his agony with instant death. In this fortunate drive four stags and two boars are brought to bag. One of the latter, in a thick brambled mancha, for some time defied the dogs, which declined to face him at close quarters. He was a brute of unusual size, and each time he faced the dogs with gnashing tusks, they retired. At last a shot fired in the air dislodged him, and a quick rifle-shot took effect in his lower jaw. Again he sought refuge among the brambles, but the dogs now held the advantage, and inch by inch he was driven forward to a point where he offered an easy mark to several guns, and soon Manolo's long navaja was performing his obsequies. Another stag of thirteen points (see photo, p. 363), and a brace of foxes, right and left, were secured in a small isolated thicket just before dusk, and the last ten miles of our ride had thus to be managed in the dark.
One more incident before we leave these forests. Early on a winter morning we had reached the remote covert of Salavar, and owing to its extent, and the strong wind blowing, which would prevent the shots being heard, it was decided to drive it in two sections. At the end of the first beat, which had produced three stags—two lynxes also passing the line unscathed—the guns and drivers were assembled preparatory to the second (windward) batida, when, from that direction, a couple of distant gunshots were distinctly heard. Clearly poachers were at work, and already the forest-guards were conjecturing (and rightly as it proved) the personality of the depredator—an old offender who had before given trouble. The man penetrated to the heart of these wild regions accompanied only by his son, and his mode of procedure was to station himself to the leeward of any likely bit of covert, and sending the lad round, to await the chance of the latter driving forward any deer which might happen to be lying in it. His two shots had been at hinds. Leaving the main party to surround the mancha, two of the keepers galloped off in the direction of the shots, separating so as to enclose the poacher and cut off his retreat. Soon one of these came across the tracks of naked feet on the sand, and shortly overtook the culprit already preparing a drive of the covert we had just beaten. Taken by surprise, resistance or flight were impossible; the poacher's gun was taken from him, and he and his son marched off prisoners to our main party—an ill-looking ruffian clad in deer-skins, of whom some ugly tales were told. Brought before our friend representing the proprietary, the captive showed an undaunted and even impudent demeanour, asserting that it was the hunger of his children that had brought him from a village on the Guadiana (some fifty miles away), to kill the deer, which, he said, belonged to him equally with any other of God's creatures. Such primitive principles availed but little with these fierce keepers, imbued with almost feudal respect for forest-game, and this bold adherent of "commonwealth" was deprived of his gun and ordered off to the coast, with a warning that he would shortly have to answer for his conduct before the magistrate at Almonte. As he turned to obey, old Bartolo, whose estimate of the terrors of Spanish law evidently stood low, shouted after him, with a significant tap on the stock of his ancient escopeta, "Look here, Cristobal! you have given us a deal of trouble; you will come here once too often!"
It may occur to the reader to conjecture how the poacher could have utilized his deer, had he secured one, in so remote a spot. Far away on the distant boundary of the Coto, he had his donkey hidden in some thicket of lentiscus, and under cover of night would have returned for his spoils, and moving stage by stage to the sea-shore, would contrive to reach his village before daybreak. He was, however, securely caught, for within an hour another keeper arrived, who also had detected the trespasser's footprints at a point some ten miles away, and suspecting they were none of honest man, had followed the trail. Thus, even had Cristobal not been captured by us, he would still have been intercepted by this second adversary.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
WILDFOWLING IN THE WILDERNESS.
I.—A Wet Winter: A Record of Difficulties and Disappointments.
The wildfowl-shooting of the Peninsula in favourable seasons and situations is probably equal to any in Europe. But much depends on the place, and everything on the season. There are plenty of provinces and miles of marsh-land where the hardest work is barely rewarded by a pair or two of ducks, or perhaps five couple of snipe, and where many a long day will be registered blank. Then, as just stated, everything depends on the weather. For climatic conditions vary extremely as between one winter and another. Some Spanish winters are dry and rainless; hardly any moisture remaining save in certain favoured spots; and to these sparse green oases throng the aquatic hosts. Here, at such times, come the red-letter days for the fowler.
But Spanish winters are not always dry; on the contrary, it frequently happens that the rains set in in autumn with semi-tropical fury, converting this drainless land into one vast swamp, and inundating the marismas till they grow into inland seas. The difference between a wet and a dry winter is marvellous. We propose in this chapter to describe the somewhat indifferent sport of a wet winter, even in a good locality, together with its effect on the habits and distribution of wildfowl.