He handed me a double Number Twelve bore, of first-rate make and poise, and kept in first-rate order too, and some treble A cartridges.
“You won’t use all those. You’ll be lucky if you get two fair and square shots,” he remarked.
“Good luck, Mr Holt,” called out Beryl after us.
I began to feel nervous. I was only an ordinary shot, and of this form of sport was, of course, utterly without experience—and said as much.
“You only shoot tame pheasants in England, don’t you, Mr Holt?” said George, in a tone that made me wish I could turn him into one of the fowl aforesaid. Could it really be that this impudent young pup was Beryl’s brother—or Brian’s too, for the matter of that?
We cantered down the valley, then struck up a lateral spur, and rounding it came upon a deep kloof running far up into the hillside—its side black with dense bush, the boerboen and plumed euphorbia, and half a dozen other varieties whose names I didn’t know then.
“Here, Tiger, Ratels, get to heel!” cried Brian, apostrophising the rough-haired dogs which had followed, all excited, at our horses’ heels. “George, take Mr Holt on to the opening above the little krantz. You know where to post him. If he doesn’t get a shot there he won’t get one anywhere. Then come back to me.”
We made a bit of a circuit, and some twenty minutes later found ourselves in a little open space, surrounded on three sides by dense bush, while the fourth seemed to be the brink of a precipitous fall in the ground. Here I was carefully posted in the combined cover of an ant-heap and a small mimosa.
“That’s where they always break cover,” whispered George. “Man, but you mustn’t make a sound. Don’t move—don’t cough, even. So long.”
Left alone, my nerves were all athrill with excitement, and I believe my hand shook. A couple of spreuws perched upon an adjoining bush, melodiously whistling, then, become mysteriously aware of my presence, flashed off—a pair of green-blue streaks, their note changed to one of alarm. Would they scare the game and turn it back? I thought agonisingly. Heavens! what if I should shoot badly, and miss? What a fool I should look—and this was, in a way, my début!