What seemed to confirm this guess, was that I did overhear our Indian deck-scrapers making remarks....
Three or four days later, a fellow-passenger was still gloating over the glorious achievement. We were near the south of the Red Sea by this time. Thinking to make him sorry for the wounded beast, I said—“The fox is likely to be dead of starvation and thirst by now.”
“Ha, yes,” said he, “it isn’t likely to live much longer after a Martini bullet has perforated its thigh, ha, ha, ha!”
“People don’t shoot foxes in England.”
“They kill them in another way. They’re just as cruel.... Of course, one would rather have galloped after him; but what can you do from a ship’s deck?”
“Not gallop, certainly.” I tried another tack. “It is thought wrong, in the Highlands, I have heard, to shoot at the deer, unless you are likely to kill.”
“No?” He seemed surprised; but after a pause, he could explain the mystery. “It would spoil the venison,” said he.
“Do you think the man who shot the fox in the thigh has nothing to be sorry for?”
[174] ]“He could not be sure of the head. I think that, on the whole, he did very well. He was in a moving ship, and it was running.”
“Are you not sorry for the fox?”