Scarce had he got six yards into
the brake, before both spaniels quested; and, to my no small wonder, the
jungle seemed alive with woodcock; eight or nine, at the least, flapped
up at once, and skimmed along the tongue of coppice toward the high
wood, which ran along the valley, as I learned afterward, for full three
miles in length--while four or five more wheeled off to the sides,
giving myself and Draw fair shots, by which we did not fail to profit;
but I confess it was with absolute astonishment that I saw two of those
turned over, which flew inward, killed by the marvelously quick and
unerring aim of Archer, where a less thorough sportsman would have been
quite unable to discharge a gun at all, so dense was the tangled jungle.
Throughout the whole length of that skirt of coppice, a hundred and
fifty yards, I should suppose at the utmost, the birds kept rising as it
were incessantly--thirty-five, or, I think, nearly forty, being flushed
in less than twenty minutes, although comparatively few were killed,
partly from the difficulty of the ground, and partly from their getting
up by fours and fives at once. Into the high wood, however, at the last
we drove them; and there, till daylight failed us, we did our work like
men.
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