CHAPTER XXXIV.
WILDFOWLING IN THE WILDERNESS.
II.—A Dry Season (Flight-Shooting).
For days the report had reached us of the myriads of aquatic birds that had settled in the marisma. The keepers at the distant Retuerta had passed the word along to those nearer the boundary, and from these the news was transmitted by boatmen to our factotum at San Lucar. Every day the exhortation to come became more and more urgent—"come at once, or in a few days the geese will have devoured every blade of aquatic weed, every green thing that remains, and will perforce be obliged to shift to other quarters." But come we could not. The 29th November was the day previously fixed for opening the campaign, and to cross the Guadalquivir before that date was not possible. Some of our party were coming out by P. and O. to Gibraltar, others by the quicker route of the Sud express. With that malignant perversity of fate that ever seems to snatch from us the realization of one's ideal, we had, this year, fixed the day a week too late.
Mid-November was already past; autumn had given place to winter, yet not a drop of rain had fallen. Since the scorching days of summer the fountains of heaven had been stayed, and now the winter wildfowl from the north were pouring in only to find the marisma as hard and arid as the deserts of Arabia Petræa. They found not what they sought—instinct was at fault. True to their appointed season came the dark clouds of pintail, teal, and wigeon, the long skeins of grey geese; but where in other years they had revelled in shallows rich in aquatic vegetation, now the travellers find in their stead a calcined plain devoid of all that is attractive to the tastes of their tribe. For the parched-up soil, whose life-blood has been drained by the heats of the summer solstice, whose plant-life is burnt up, remains panting all the autumn through for the precious moisture that comes not. The carcases of cattle and horses that have died of thirst and lack of pasturage strew the plains; the winter-sown wheat is dead ere germination is complete.
In such years of drought many of the newly-arrived wildfowl—especially pintails—pass on southwards (into Africa) not to return till February; but numbers crowd into the few places where the precious element—water—still exists. Such a spot is the Retuerta; and along its ten-mile length of tasselled sedge and 30-foot bamboo are concentrated such hosts of wildfowl as seldom entrance the sportsman's eye. In this favoured nook in distant Andalucia let us now live again a few of those eventful days.
At length our party of ten guns are assembled in the shooting-box. Never before, at this season, have we ridden those thirty miles across so thirsty a land. Vasquez and his confrères received us reproachfully—Why have we not come sooner? But are all the geese gone? Hay, hay anseres, pero no la decima parte de qué habia—"there are some geese," he replies, "but not the tenth part of what there were." Then a smile came over his Red-Indian countenance, as he added—pero todavia hay para divertirse—"there are yet enough for sport." When Vasquez reckons there are enough for sport we know that, allowing for Andalucian exaggeration, there will be hot barrels before the day is done. What he calls, in his expressive language, a salpicon—a sprinkling, may mean several acres in a flock; a puñado, or handful, a thick mass of several thousand! When he talks of a tiro regulár—an ordinary shot, we know he means about thirty couples of mallards with one barrel. For Vasquez has striven for a living, as his fathers did before him, with the ducks of these wilds; and when he did let off his ponderous blunderbuss it was at very close quarters, and meant execution. Quantity was his desideratum, for he had to make a large bag for little money, depending on others to realize his spoils in the distant market, and, as usual, much of the hard-earned coin stayed in the hands of middlemen. Thus Vasquez, with other marsh-men, was tempted by our offer of a fixed wage, and has for years been keeper on the marisma, where his reed-thatched choza is barely visible amidst waving sedges and bulrushes hard by the most favoured haunts of his aquatic charges. Vasquez cannot tell you who is Prime Minister at Madrid, and cares not whether England may wish to surrender Gibraltar to Spain; but he can tell you whither that pack of duck, like a small cloud on the horizon, is hurrying to alight; he can point out to you the birds fresh come from the north, as distinguished from earlier arrivals, as he can also tell you when ducks, which, to the uninitiated, appear quite happy and content, are packing up, and will be gone with the morning's light. He will take you where the snipe are in hundreds when you have searched their favourite haunts in vain; and will place you at dusk, if you have faith in him and wait till sunset, where the greylags will pass within ten yards. So Vasquez is a useful man, though he knows nothing of the great world outside of the Retuerta. We felt, nevertheless, that we were a week too late, and had perhaps lost the best chance of a century.
The plan of campaign was to line the northern end of the marsh for some five or six miles, placing a gun in each one of certain selected spots. For this purpose, large casks are sunk at intervals, some well hidden among rushes, others in open pools; but in these latter cases the tubs were cunningly concealed by cut tamarisks and other water-plants.
To place the guns in their respective tubs, extending over six miles of bog, and the nearest tub almost the same distance from our quarters, is a lengthy operation, necessitating a very early start. Long before dawn we were in the saddle. Dark and rough at first was the ride just preceding that impressive change—the lifting of night's mantle from the earth. Gradually grew these first rays, and soon the whole east was aglow, gleaming across parched plains, as the glorious morn awakened. To the enticing oasis of the Retuerta pushed forward the long cavalcade, but the sun was high ere all the strategical points could be simultaneously occupied. For it was arranged that each gunner should advance at a given signal to his post, and that no shot should be fired till all were in position. Of the difficulties and dangers in reaching those points, through marsh and quaking bog, we will not stop to speak; at length all were in place, and ducks already streamed overhead within half gunshot while we awaited the signal to open. Then from the distant land a shot resounded, and simultaneously, all along our line, rang out a merry fusillade; here comes my first chance, a pack of wigeon, straight for the tub. A bright-winged drake paid first tribute, and two more from "the brown" fall to the left. As fast as cartridges can be slipped into the breech they are required, and two guns are kept going continuously—now at a swinging flight of teal or swift garganey,[70] then at the more stately pintails, next at a single shoveler-drake on his straight and hurried course. Now the ten-bore is useful for a string of mallards which are already seeking safer altitudes, and for a couple of curlews, for once at fault. But we need not recapitulate, even were it possible to remember, the rapid sequence of shots, which for an hour were almost continuous. Shots of every kind there offered—incoming, outgoing, to right and left, direct or oblique, and at every height and angle, acute, obtuse, and perpendicular. Now a flight of wigeon, skimming low on the water-level, suddenly fling themselves in one's face, all unseen till far too near; then from behind, with a rush as of a whirlwind, a trip of swift-winged teal or swifter garganeys almost take one's hat off, then "sky" like rockets, on seeing the danger—difficult to stop are these! At intervals, there is a variation, when, during the earlier part of the action, the files of grey geese are seen and heard as they sail along, looming so huge among the smaller fowl. They are not too high as, outward-bound, they cross our posts; but let them get well over-head, as near as ever they will come, ere you open fire, or no mighty splash in the water behind will gratify your ear. The bulk of the shooting, however, is at files of duck speeding fast and straight in bee-lines overhead: high as a rule, mostly very high, the sort of shot that, once learnt, can be generally pulled off—and satisfactory shots they are, requiring an infinite degree of faith and forward allowance.