“What on earth have you got there?” my friend inquired of the sub-editor, who was working at the gun-case.
“It’s the gun and cartridges,” replied the young man; “but I’m not quite certain how to make fast the barrels to the stock.”
“Great heavens!” cried my friend. “You’ve brought a double-barrelled sporting gun to shoot rooks!”
And so he had.
We tried to explain to him that for any human being to point such a weapon at a rook would be little short of murder, but he utterly failed to see the force of our arguments. He very good-humouredly said that, as we had come out to shoot rooks, he couldn’t see how it mattered—especially to the rooks—whether they were shot with his gun or with our rook rifles. He added that he thought the majority of the birds were like Bob Acres, and would as lief be shot in an ungentlemanly as a gentlemanly attitude.
Of course it is impossible to argue with such a man. We only said that he must accept the responsibility for the butchery, and in this he cheerfully acquiesced, slipping cartridges into both barrels—the friend from whom he had borrowed the weapon had taught him how to do this.
We soon found that at this point the breaking-strain of his information was reached. He had no more idea of sport than a butcher, or the Sonttag jager of the Oberlander Blatter.
As the rooks flew from the ruins to the belt of trees my friend and I brought down one each, and by the time we had reloaded, we were ready for two more, but I fired too soon, so that only one bird dropped. I saw the eyes of the man with the shot-gun gleam, “his heart with lust of slaying strong,” and he forthwith fired first one barrel and then the other at an old rook that cursed us by his gods, sitting on a branch of a tree ten yards off.
The bird flapped heavily away, becoming more vituperative every moment.
“Look here,” I shouted, “you mustn’t shoot at a bird that’s sitting on a branch.”