University of Virginia Library

2. THE SNIPE.

“What sort of a morning is it, Timothy?” asked I, rubbing my
eyes, as I sat bolt upright in bed on the irruption of that fidus
Achates, some half hour before sunrise, into my little dormitory;
“What sort of a morning is it?”

“A varry bonny mornin, Measter Frank,” responded he; “there
was a leetle tooch o' whaite frost aboot midnaight, but sin' t' moon
set, there 's been a soop o' warm ra-ain, and it's dooll noo, and saft
loike, wi' t' wind sootherly—but it's boon to be nooght at all, Ayse
warrant it. T' Soon 'll be oot enoo—see if he beant—and t' snaipe
'll laie laike steans. Ayse a wa noo, and fetch t' het watter—t' ve-al
cootlets is i' t' pann, and John Van Dyne he's been a wa-aiting iver
sin 't got laight.”

“That's not very long, then,” answered I, springing out of bed,
“at all events; for it's as dark as pitch now; bring me a candle, I
can't shave by this light; there! leave the door into the parlor
open, and tell John to come in and amuse me while I'm shaving.
Is Mr. Archer up?”

“Oop? Weel Ay wot he is oop; and awa wi' Measter Draa, and
t' lang goons, doon to t' brigg; to watch t' doocks flay, but Van
Dyne says t' doocks has dean flaying.”

“Yes, yes—they 'se quit sartin,” answered a merry voice without,
and in stalked John, the best fowl-shot, the best snipe-marker, the
best canoe-paddler, and the best fellow every way, in New Jersey.

“How are you, John?—any birds on the Piece?”

“Nicely!” he answered, to my first query—“nicely,”—shaking
me warmly by the hand, and, after a pause, added, “I can't say as
there be; the Piece is too wet altogether!”

“Too wet—aye? that's bad, John!”

“Lord, yes—too wet entirely; I was half over it with the canoe
last week, and didn't see—no not half a dozen, and they was
round the edges like, where there wasn't no good lying? there
was a heap o' yellow legs, though, and a smart chance o' plover.”

“Oh, d—n the plover, John; but shall we find no snipe?”

“Not upon neither of the Pieces, no how—but there was heaps
of them a flyin' over all last night; yes! yes! I guess Archer and
I can fix it so as we'll git a few—but, do tell, who's that darned
fat chap as I see goin' down”—

Here he was interrupted by the distant report of a heavy gun,
followed almost upon the instant by a second.

“Ding!” he exclaimed, “but there's a flight now! arn't there?
I guess now, Mr. Forester, I'd as well jist run down with old Shot,
leastwise he'll fetch um, if so be they've fallen in the water.”

“Do! do!” cried I, “by all means, John; and tell them to come
back directly; for half the breakfast's on the table, and I'll be
ready by the time they're here.”

By the time I had got my jacket on, and while I was in the act

of pulling up my long fen boots before the cheerful fire, I perceived
by the clack of tongues without, that the sportsmen had returned;
and the next moment Harry entered, accompanied by Fat Tom in
his glory, with no less than two couple and a half of that most beautiful
and delicate of wild-fowl, the green-winged teal.

“That's not so bad, Frank,” exclaimed Harry, depositing, as he
spoke, his heavy single-barrel in the chimney-corner, and throwing
himself into an arm-chair; “that's not so bad for ten minutes'
work, is it?”

“Better a d—d sight,” Tom chimed in, “than layin snoozin till
the sun is high; but that's the way with these etarnal drinkin men,
they does keep bright just so long as they keeps a liquorin; but
when that's done with, you don't hear nothin more of them till noon,
or arter. D—n all sich drunken critters.”

“That's a devilish good one,” answered I; “the deuce a one of
you has shaved, or for that matter, washed his face, to the best of
my belief; and then, because you tumble out of bed like Hottentots,
and rush out, gun in hand, with all the accumulated filth of a
hard day's drive, and a long night's sweat, reeking upon you, you
abuse a Christian gentleman, who gets up soberly, and dresses himself
decently—for idleness and what not!”

“Soberly!” answered Tom; “Soberly! Jest hear, now, Harry,
—Soberly!—jest like as though he hadn't a had his bitters, and
d—d bitter bitters, too!”

“Not a drop, upon honor,” I replied; “not a drop this morning?”

“What?—oh! oh! that's the reason, then, why you're so 'tarnal
cross. Here, landlord, bring us in them cider sperrits—I harnt had
only a small taste myself—take a drink, Frank, and you'll feel slick
as silk torights, I tell you.”

“Thank you, no!” said I, falling foul of the veal cutlets delicately
fried in batter, with collops of ham interspersed, for which
my worthy host is justly celebrated—“thank you, no! bitters are
good things in their way, but not when breakfast treads so close
upon the heels of them!”

“Tak a soop, Measter Frank—tak a soop, sur!” exhorted Timothy,
who was bearing around a salver laden with tumblers, the decanter
gracing his better hand. “Tak a soop, thou'lt be all t'
betther for 't enoo. Measter Draa 's i' t' roight o' 't. It's varry
good stooff Ay'se oophaud it.”

“I dont doubt that at all, Tim; natheless I'll be excused just
now.”

I was soon joined at the table by the fat man and Archer, who
were so busily employed in stowing away what Sir Dugald Dalgetty
terms provant, that few words passed between us. At length
when the furor edendi was partially suppressed: “Now then,
John,” said Harry, “we are going to be here two days—to-morrow,
that is, and to-day—what are we to beat, so as to get ground for
both days? Begin with the long meadow, I suppose, and beat the
vlies toward the small piece home, and finish here before the door.”

“That's it, I reckon,” answered the jolly Dutchman, “but you
knows pretty nigh as well as I can tell you.”

“Better, John, better, if I knew exactly how the ground was—
but that will be the driest, won't it?”

“Sartain,” replied the other, “but we'll get work enough without
beating the ground hereaways before the house; we'll keep
that to begin upon to-morrow, and so follow up to the big meadow,
and to Loises, and all along under the widow Mulford's, if it holds
dry to-day; and somehow now I kind o' guess it will. There'll be
a heap o' birds there by to-morrow—they were a-flyin' cur'ous, now,
last night, I tell you.”

“Well, then, let us be moving. Where's the game-bag, Timothy?
give it to John! Is the brandy bottle in it, and the luncheon?
hey?”

“Ay, ay! Sur!” answered Tim; “t' brandy 's t' big wicker
bottle, wi' t' tin cup—and soom cauld pork and crackers 'i 't gam
bag—and a spare horn of powder, wi' a pund in 't. Here, tak it,
John Van Dyne, and mooch good may 't do ye—and—hand a bit,
man! here 's t' dooble shot belt, sling it across your shoulder, and
awa wi' you.”

Every thing being now prepared, and having ordered dinner to be
in readiness at seven, we lighted our cigars and started; Harry,
with the two setters trotting steadily at his heels, and his gun on
his shoulder, leading the way at a step that would have cleared
above five miles an hour, I following at my best pace, Tom Draw
puffing and blowing like a grampus in shoal water, and John Van
Dyne swinging along at a queer loping trot behind me. We crossed
the bridges and the causeway by which we had arrived the previous
night, passed through the toll-gate, and, turning short to the right
hand, followed a narrow sandy lane for some three quarters of a
mile, till it turned off abruptly to the left, crossing a muddy streamlet
by a small wooden bridge. Here Harry paused, flung the stump
of his cheroot into the ditch, and dropping the butt of his gun,
began very quietly to load, I following his example without saying
a word.

“Here we are, Frank,” said he; “this long stripe of rushy fields,
on both sides of the ditch, is what they call the long meadow, and
rare sport have I had on it in my day, but I'm afraid it's too wet
now—we'll soon see, though,” and he strode across the fence, and
waved the dogs off to the right and left. “You take the right hand,
Frank; and, Tom, keep you the ditch bank, all the way; the ground
is firmest there; we've got the wind in our favor; a little farther
off, Frank, they wont lie hard for an hour or two, at all events;
and I don't believe we shall find a bird before we cross the next
fence.”

Heads up and sterns down, off raced the fleet setters, beating the
meadows fairly from the right hand fence to the ditch, crossing each
other in mid course, and quartering the ground superbly—but
nothing rose before them, nor did their motions indicate the slightest
taint of scent upon the dewy herbage. The ground, however, contrary

to Harry's expectations, was in prime order—loose, loamy,
moist, black soil, with the young tender grass of spring shooting up
every where, bright succulent and sweet; tall tufts of rushes here
and there, and patches of brown flags, the reliques of the bye-gone
year, affording a sure shelter for the timid waders. The day was
cool and calm, with a soft mellow light—for the sun was curtained,
though not hidden, by wavy folds of gauze-like mist—and a delicious
softness in the mild western breeze, before which we were
wending our way, as every one who would bag snipe, must do,
down wind. We crossed the second fence—the ground was barer,
wetter, splashy in places, and much poached by the footsteps of the
cattle, which had been pastured there last autumn. See, the red
dog has turned off at a right angle from his course—he lifts his head
high, straitens his neck and snuffs the air, slackening his pace to a
slow, guarded trot, and waving his stern gently—Chase sees him,
pauses, almost backs!

“Look to, Frank—there's a bird before him!”

Skeap! skeap! skeap!—up they jumped eighty yards off at the
least, as wild as hawks; skimming the surface of the meadow, and
still by their shrill squeak calling up other birds to join them, till
seven or eight were on the wing together; then up they rose
clearly defined against the sky, and wheeled in short zigzags above
the plain, as if uncertain whither they should fly, till at length they
launched off straight to the right hand, and after a flight of a full
mile, pitched suddenly and steeply down behind a clump of newly
budding birches.

“I knows where them jokers be, Mr. Archer;” exclaimed Van
Dyne.

“In h—ll, I guess they be,” responded Master Draw; “leastwise
they flew far enough to be there anyhow!”

“No, no! Tom, they've not gone so very far,” said Archer, “and
there's good lying for them there, I shall be satisfied if they all go
that way. To ho! to ho!” he interrupted himself, for the dogs
had both come to a dead point among some tall flags; and Shot's
head cocked on one side, with his nose pointed directly downward,
and his brow furrowed into a knotty frown, showed that the bird
was under his very feet. “Come up, Tom—come up, you old sinner—dont
you see Shot's got a snipe under his very nose?”

“Well! well! I sees,” answered Tom; “I sees it, d—n you!
but give a fellow time, you 'd best, in this etarnal miry mud-hole!”
and, sinking mid leg deep at every step, the fat man floundered on,
keeping, however, his gun ever in position, and his keen quick eye
steadily fixed on the stanch setter.

“Are you ready, now? I'll flush him,” exclaimed Harry, taking
a step in advance; and instantly up sprang the bird, with his
sharp, thrice-repeated cry, and a quick flutter of his wings, almost
straight into the air over the head of Tom, striving to get the
wind.

Bang! Draw's first barrel was discharged, the snipe being at
that moment scarce ten feet from the muzzle, the whole load going

like a bullet, of course harmlessly!—his second followed, but,
like the first, in vain; for the bird, having fairly weathered him,
was flying very fast, and twisting all the time, directly up wind.
Then Harry's gun was pitched up, and the trigger drawn almost
before the butt was at his shoulder. Down went the bird; slanting
away six yards, though killed stone dead, in the direction of
his former flight, so rapidly had he been going, when the shot struck
him.

“Mark! mark!” I shouted, “Harry. Mark! mark! behind
you!” As three more birds took wing, before the red dog, and
were bearing off, too far from me, to the right hand, like those
which had preceded them. I had, when I cried “mark,” not an
idea that he could possibly have killed one; for he had turned
already quite round in his tracks, to shoot the first bird, and the
others had risen wild, in the first place, and were now forty yards
off at the least; but quick as thought he wheeled again, cocking
his second barrel in the very act of turning, and sooner almost than
I could imagine the possibility of his even catching sight of them,
a second snipe was fluttering down wing-tipped.

“Beautiful, beautiful, indeed,” I cried involuntarily; “the
quickest and the cleanest double-shot I have seen in many a
day.”

“It warnt so d—d slow, no how,” replied Tom, somewhat crest-fallen,
as he re-loaded his huge demi-cannon.

“Slow! you old heathen! if you could shoot better than a boy
five years old, we should have had three birds—I could have got
two of those last just as well as not, if you had knocked the first
down like a christian sportsman—but look! look at those devils,”
Harry went on, pointing toward the birds, which had gone off, and
at which he had been gazing all the time; “confound them, they're
going to drum!”

And so indeed they were; and for the first time in my life I beheld
a spectacle, which I had heard of indeed, but never had
believed fully, till my own eyes now witnessed it. The two birds,
which had been flushed, mounted up! up! scaling the sky in short
small circles, till they were quite as far from this dull earth, as the
lark, when “at heaven's gate he sings”—and then dropt plumb
down, as it would seem, fifty feet in an instant, with a strange
drumming sound, which might be heard for a mile or more. Then
up they soared again, and again repeated their manœuvre; while at
each repetition of the sound another and another bird flew up from
every part of the wide meadow, and joined those in mid ether; till
there must have been, at the least reckoning, forty snipe soaring
and drumming within the compass of a mile, rendering the whole
air vocal with that strange quivering hum, which has been stated
by some authors—and among these by the ingenious and observant
Gilbert White—to be ventriloquous; although it is now pretty
generally—and probably with justice—conceded to be the effect of
a vibratory motion of the quill feathers set obliquely, so as to make
the air whistle through them. For above an hour did this wild

work continue; not a bird descending from its “bad eminence,”
but, on the contrary, each one that we flushed out of distance, for
they would not lie to the dogs at all, rising at once to join them.
“We have no chance,” said Harry, “no chance at all of doing
any thing, unless the day changes, and the sun gets out hot, which
I fear it wont. Look out, Tom, watch that beggar to your right
there; he has done drumming, and is going to 'light;” and, with
the word, sheer down he darted some ninety yards from the spot
where we stood, till he was scarce three feet above the marsh;
when he wheeled off, and skimmed the flat, uttering a sharp harsh
clatter, entirely different from any sound I ever heard proceed from
a snipe's bill before, though in wild weather in the early spring
time I have heard it since, full many a day. The cry resembled
more the cackling of a hen, which has just laid an egg, than any
other sound I can compare it to; and consisted of a repetition some
ten times in succession of the syllable kek, so hard and jarring that
it was difficult to believe it the utterance of so small a bird. But
if I was surprised at what I heard, what was I, when I saw the
bird alight on the top rail of a high snake fence, and continue there
five or ten minutes, when it dropped down into the long marsh
grass. Pointing toward the spot where I had marked it, I was
advancing stealthily, when Archer said, “You may try if you like,
but I can tell you that you wont get near him!” I persevered,
however, and fancied I should get within long shot, but Harry was
quite right; for he rose again skeap! skeap! and went off as wild
as ever, towering as before, and drumming; but for a short time
only, when, tired apparently of the long flight he had already taken,
he stooped from his elevation with the same jarring chatter, and
alighted—this time to my unmitigated wonder—upon the topmost
spray of a large willow tree, which grew by the ditch side![1]

“It's not the least use—not the least—pottering after these birds
now,” said Harry. “We'll get on to the farther end of the meadows,
where the grass is long, and where they may lie something
better; and we'll beat back for these birds in the afternoon, if Dan
Phœbus will but deign to shine out.

On we went, therefore, Tom Draw swearing strange oaths at the
birds, that acted so darnation cur'ous, and at myself and Harry for
being such etarnal fools as to have brought him sweatin into them
d—d stinkin mud-holes; and I, to say the truth, almost despairing
of success. In half an hour's walking we did, however, reach
some ground, which—yielding far more shelter to the birds, as
being meadow-land not pastured, but covered with coarse rushy
tussocks—seemed to promise something better in the way of sport;
and before we had gone many yards beyond the first fence, a bird

rose at long distance to Tom's right, and was cut down immediately
by a quick snap shot of that worthy, on whose temper, and ability
to shoot, the firmer ground and easier walking had already begun
to work a miracle.

“Who says I can't shoot now, no more than a five-year old,
d—n you?” he shouted, dropping the butt of his gun deliberately,
when skeap! skeap! startled by the near report, two more snipe
rose within five yards of him!—fluttered he was assuredly, and
fully did I expect to see a clear miss—but he refrained, took time,
cocked his gun coolly, and letting the birds get twenty yards away,
dropped that to his right hand, killed clean with his second barrel,
while Harry doubled up the other in his accustomed style, I not
having as yet got a chance of any bird.

“Down, charge!” said Harry; “down, charge! Shot, you villain!”—for
the last bird had fallen wing-tipped only, and was now
making ineffectual attempts to rise, bouncing three or four feet
from the ground, with his usual cry, and falling back again only to
repeat his effort within five minutes—this proved too much, as it
seemed, for the poor dog's endurance, so that, after rising once or
twice uneasily, and sitting down again at his master's word, he
drew on steadily, and began roading the running bird, regardless
of the score which he might have been well aware he was running
up against himself. During this business Chase had sat pretty
quiet, though I observed a nervous twitching of ears, and a
latent spark of the devil in his keen black eye, which led me to
expect some mischief, so that I kept my gun all ready for immediate
action; and well it was that I did so; for the next moment
he dashed in, passing Shot, who was pointing steadily enough, and
picked up the bird after a trifling scuffle, the result of which was
that a couple more snipe were flushed wild by the noise. Without
a moment's hesitation I let drive at them with both barrels, knocking
the right hand snipe down very neatly; the left hand bird, however,
pitched up a few feet just as I drew the trigger; and the
consequence was that, as I fancied, I missed him clean.

“There! there! you stoopid, blundering, no-sich-thing—there!
now who talks of missing? That was the nicest, prettiest, easiest
shot I ever did see; and you—you shiftless nigger you—you talks
to me of missing!”

“Shut up! shut up! you most incorrigible old brute!” responded
Harry, who had been steadily employed in marking the missed
bird, as I deemed him. “Shut up your stupid jaw! That snipe's
as dead as the old cow you gave us for supper, the last time we
slept at Warwick, though from a different cause; for the cow, Jem
Flyn says, died of the murrain or some other foul rotten disorder;
and that small winged fellow has got a very sufficient dose of blue
pill to account for his decease! So shut up! and keep still while
I take the change out of these confounded dogs; or we shall have
every bird we get near to-day flushed like those two. Ha! Shot!
Ha! Chase! Down cha-a-arge—down cha-a-arge—will you? will
you? Down charge!”

And for about five minutes, nothing was heard upon the meadows
but the resounding clang of the short heavy dog-whip, the
stifled grunts of Shot, and the vociferous yells of Chase, under the
merited and necessary chastisement.

“Down charge, now, will you?” he continued, as, pocketing his
whip, he wiped his heated brow, picked up his gun, and proceeded
to bag the scattered game. “There! that job's done,” he said,
and a job that I hate most confoundedly it is—but it must be done
now and then; and the more severely, when necessary, the more
mercifully!”

“Now that's what I doos call a right down lie,” the fat man
interposed. “You loves it, and you knows you do—you loves to
lick them poor dumb brutes, cause they can't lick back, no how.
You, Chase, d—n you, quit mouthing that there snipe—quit mouthing
it, I say—else I'll cut cut the snoopin soul of you!

“So much for Tom Draw's lecture upon cruelty to animals—
that's what I call rich!” answered Harry. “But come, let us get
on. I marked that bird to a yard, down among those dwarf rosebushes;
and there we shall find, I'll be bound on it, good shooting.
How very stupid of me not to think of that spot! You know,
John, we always find birds there, when they can't be found any
where else.”

On we went, after a re-invigorating cup of mountain dew, with
spirits raised at the prospect of some sport at last, and as we bagged
the snipe which—Harry was right—had fallen killed quite dead,
the sun came out hot, broad, and full. The birds were lying thick
among the stunted bushes and warm bubbling springs which covered,
in this portion of the ground, some twenty acres of marsh
meadow; and as the afternoon waxed warm, they lay right well
before the dogs, which having learned the consequences of misdemeanor,
behaved with all discretion. We shot well! and the sport
waxed so fast and furious, that till the shades of evening fell we
had forgotten—all the three—that our luncheon, saving the article
of drams, was still untasted; and that, when we assembled at seven
of the clock in Hard's cozey parlor, and shook out of bag and pocket
our complement of sixty-three well-grown and well-fed snipe, we
were in reasonable case to do good justice to a right good supper.