At the same time a fresh shout arose of, “Woodcock over,” and looking down the spinney I saw a third bird high up in the air, being blown along like a brown and whirling leaf straight over Quatermain’s head. And then followed the prettiest little bit of shooting that I ever saw. The bird to the right was flying low, not ten yards from the line of a hedgerow, and Quatermain took him first because he would become invisible the soonest of any. Indeed, nobody who had not his hawk’s eyes could have seen to shoot at all. But he saw the bird well enough to kill it dead as a stone. Then turning sharply, he pulled on the second bird at about forty-five yards, and over he went. By this time the third woodcock was nearly over him, and flying very high, straight down the wind, a hundred feet up or more, I should say. I saw him glance at it as he opened his gun, threw out the right cartridge and slipped in another, turning round as he did so. By this time the cock was nearly fifty yards away from him, and travelling like a flash. Lifting his gun he fired after it, and, wonderful as the shot was, killed it dead. A tearing gust of wind caught the dead bird, and blew it away like a leaf torn from an oak, so that it fell a hundred and thirty yards off or more. “I say, Quatermain,” I said to him when the beaters were up, “do you often do this sort of thing?” “Well,” he answered, with a dry smile, “the last time I had to load three shots as quickly as that was at rather larger game. It was at elephants. I killed them all three as dead as I killed those woodcocks; but it very nearly went the other way, I can tell you; I mean that they very nearly killed me.” Just at that moment the keeper came up, “Did you happen to get one of them there cocks, sir?” he said, with the air of a man who did not in the least expect an answer in the affirmative. “Well, yes, Jeffries,” answered Quatermain; “you will find one of them by the hedge, and another about fifty yards out by the plough there to the left——” The keeper had turned to go, looking a little astonished, when Quatermain called him back. “Stop a bit, Jeffries,” he said. “You see that pollard about one hundred and forty yards off? Well, there should be another woodcock down in a line with it, about sixty paces out in the field.” “Well, if that bean’t the very smartest bit of shooting,” murmured Jeffries, and departed. After that we went home, and in due course Sir Henry Curtis and Captain Good arrived for dinner, the latter arrayed in the tightest and most ornamental dress-suit I ever saw. I remember that the waistcoat was adorned with five pink coral buttons.