“I say, Fleming, when are you going to have your snooze?” called out Bracebrydge nastily. “You don’t look so sleepy now as you did—Ar—ha—ha!” The shooters proceeded on the plan laid down, except that Bracebrydge suggested they should leave the ponies much sooner than was at first intended. Then, being in a villainous temper, he shot badly, and wondered what the devil they had come to such an infernally rotten bit of shooting for, and cursed the attendant forest guard, and made a studiously offensive remark or two to Campian, who received the same with the silence of utter contempt. Before they had been at it an hour, he flung down his gun and burst out with:
“Look here Upward, I can’t shoot a damn to-day, and my boot is chafing most infernally. I shall be lame for a month if I walk any more. Couldn’t one of these fellows fetch my pony? I’ll go back to camp.”
“All right, old chap; do just as you like,” replied Upward, giving the necessary orders.
“Why not get on the gee, and ride on with us”—suggested Campian, innocently. “The scenery is rather good further down.”
“Oh, damn the scenery! Look here though. I don’t want to spoil you two fellows’ shoot. You go on. Don’t wait for me. The nigger will be here with the horse directly.”
“No. There’s no point in waiting,” assented Upward. “We’ll go on eh, Campian? So long, Bracebrydge.”
The two resumed their shoot, cutting down a bird here and a bird there, and soon came together again.
“That’s a real show specimen, that man Bracebrydge,” remarked Campian. “What made you freeze on to him, Upward?”
“Oh, I met him in the Shâlalai club. I never took to the man, but he was in with some others I rather liked. It was Fleming who brought him up here.”
“So? But, do you know, it’s a sorrowful spectacle to see a man of his age—already growing grey—making such an egregious ass of himself. Mind you, I’m not surprised at him being a little ‘gone’—she’s a very taking little girl—but to give himself away as he does, that’s where the lunacy of the affair comes in.”