Captain Belfield, from his perfect knowledge of the language and the people—whom, I observed, he always treated with great kindness—was soon able to ascertain the spot in the neighbourhood of the river where the game was to be found (there is but little, comparatively, in this part of Bengal), and which I should probably have been long in discovering; to them we accordingly went, and found hares, black partridges, and abundance of real snipes, which I perceived did not differ in the smallest degree from English ones; and I had the supreme felicity of bagging something more respectable than paddy-birds and snippets, which I afterwards treated with proper contempt.
The captain, although he had been so long on the retired list as a sportsman, fired a capital good stick nevertheless, and knocked the black partridges about, right and left, in great style; indeed, he once or twice, to borrow a not very delicate sporting phrase, “wiped my nose” in a very off-hand manner, proofs of his powers as a marksman with which I could have readily dispensed; as next probably, to a smack in the face, there are few things more disagreeable than having your “nose wiped.”
The black partridge of India, I must inform the reader, is a beautiful bird; its breast (i.e., the male’s), glossy shining black, spangled with round and clearly defined white spots; its haunts are the long grass on the borders of jheels and marshes, from whence it creeps, in the mornings and evenings, into the neighbouring cultivation.
When flushed, up he goes, as straight as a line, to a certain elevation, and then off with him, at a right angle, like a dart. He is by no means an easy shot, though, from his mode of rising, it would appear otherwise.
It will be long ere I forget the thrill of pleasure I experienced when I dropped my first black partridge on this occasion, and how pompously, after ascertaining his specific gravity, I consigned him to my bag, taking him out about every five minutes, to indulge in another examination. It is difficult to express the contempt with which I then viewed my quondam friends, the snippets and paddy-birds.
The prodigious quantity of water-fowl to be seen on some of the shallow lakes or jheels of India, is well calculated to astonish the European beholder. I have seen clouds of them rise from such sheets of water, particularly in the upper part of the Dooab, with a sound sometimes not unlike the roar of a distant park of artillery; geese of two or three sorts; ducks, teal, coots, saruses, and flamingoes; the latter, however, should perhaps be excepted from the concluding part of the remark, for a string of these beautiful scarlet and flame-coloured creatures, floating silently in the air, or skimming, on lazy pinions, over an expanse of water, seem like a chain of fairies, or bright spirits of some Eastern tale, descending gently to earth; nor do I think this is an exaggerated description, as all will allow who have seen the flame-coloured cordon on the wing.
Having now been put in the way of doing things according to rule, I no longer, as I have before hinted, molested such ignoble birds and beasts as, in my state of innocence, I was wont to destroy. No more did I nail the unhappy snippets to the bank from my bolio window nor disturb the ’lorn cooings of the turtle-dove in her bower of mango shade, by a rattling irruption of No. 6; but in a steady, sportsmanlike form, accompanied by Ramdial (who, by the way, had no sinecure of it), laden with chattah (umbrella), game-bag, and brandy-pawney bottle in leathern case, and Nuncoo, the dog-keeper, with Teazer and the bull-dog, I was almost daily in the jheels and swamps, mud-larking after the ducks and snipes.
The reader will think, probably, and I am not disposed to question the correctness of his opinion, that bull-dogs are not the best of the species that can be selected for snipe-shooting.
Granted, I say again; but he will be pleased to remember that there are such disagreeable things as tigers and wild boars (and great bores they are too) to be met with in India. It therefore struck me that, in case of an unexpected rencontre with one or other of these creatures, the bull-dog might do good service, by making a diversion in my favour, and in concert with Teazer, attacking the enemy in flank and rear, keeping him in check, whilst I fell back on the fleet, as many a valiant and experienced general had done before me.
Hector, however, though reserved for such important purposes, took no pleasure in the sport; his heart was with the flesh pots of Whitechapel, and Nuncoo had sometimes hard work to get him through the swamps; Teazer behaved better, and, indeed, for a dog of such very low extraction, displayed a better nose than I expected.