With the rabbits fun began in earnest. All that had gone before was tame in comparison, for pigeons die quickly, but rabbits continue to run after being shot, and still provide excellent amusement, if the vital parts are untouched. It was not shooting at all; not a particle of skill was required, as the basket was close to the competitor, and he shot immediately the animal began to run, and sometimes before; but it was killing, it was a sort of bloodshed, and nothing more was asked for. Hardly a rabbit was killed cleanly, as the moormen are, as a rule, awkward with the gun. As the creatures invariably ran straight away from the crowd, they were usually shot in the hinder parts, and then would drag themselves on, until they were seized, either by the man who had fired, or by the small boys, and carried back to be flung upon the heap of bodies, some of them dead, and some not. Even feeble old Master entered into the fun of the thing, and begged permission to break a rabbit's neck with his own hands, so that he might still call himself a sportsman. "Come away, daddy. I'm getting queer," said Boodles. Weevil woke from a sort of trance, and shook his head oddly, but said nothing. Power of speech was not his just then. He had hitherto kept himself scrupulously apart from such innocent village pleasures, afraid to trust himself at them, but what he saw quite confirmed what he had believed. It was not sport in any sense of the word. It was mere animal passion and lust for blood. It was love of cruelty, not any ambition to take a prize, which animated the competitors. It would have meant small enjoyment for them had the pigeons been made of clay and the rabbits of clockwork. Because the creatures they shot at could feel, could shed blood, and were feeling pain, were shedding blood, the men were happy; not only happy, but drunk with the passion, and half mad with the lust, of their bloody game.