“So you have got well again,” he said in a genial voice that yet did not ring true. Indeed, it suggested to me that he wished I had done nothing of the sort. “Well, Mynheer Allan, here you find me quite ready to shoot your head off.” (He didn’t mean that, though I dare say he was.) “I tell you that the mare is as good as mine, for I have been practising, haven’t I, Marie? as the _aasvogels_” (that is, vultures) “round the stead know to their cost.” “Yes, Cousin Hernan,” said Marie, “you have been practising, but so, perhaps, has Allan.” By this time all the company of Boers had collected round us, and began to evince a great interest in the pending contest, as was natural among people who rarely had a gun out of their hands, and thought that fine shooting was the divinest of the arts. However, they were not allowed to stay long, as the Kaffirs said that the geese would begin their afternoon flight within about half an hour. So the spectators were all requested to arrange themselves under the sheer cliff of the kloof, where they could not be seen by the birds coming over them from behind, and there to keep silence. Then Pereira and I—I attended by my loader, but he alone, as he said a man at his elbow would bother him—and with us Retief, the referee, took our stations about a hundred and fifty yards from this face of cliff. Here we screened ourselves as well as we could from the keen sight of the birds behind some tall bushes which grew at this spot. I seated myself on a camp-stool, which I had brought with me, for my leg was still too weak to allow me to stand long, and waited. Presently Pereira said through Retief that he had a favour to ask, namely, that I would allow him to take the first six shots, as the strain of waiting made him nervous. I answered, “Certainly,” although I knew well that the object of the request was that he believed that the outpost geese—“spy-geese” we called them—which would be the first to arrive, would probably come over low down and slow, whereas those that followed, scenting danger, might fly high and fast. This, in fact, proved to be the case, for there is no bird more clever than the misnamed goose. When we had waited about a quarter of an hour Hans said: “Hist! Goose comes.” As he spoke, though as yet I could not see the bird, I heard its cry of “_Honk, honk_” and the swish of its strong wings. Then it appeared, an old spur-winged gander, probably the king of the flock, flying so low that it only cleared the cliff edge by about twenty feet, and passed over not more than thirty yards up, an easy shot. Pereira fired, and down it came rather slowly, falling a hundred yards or so behind him, while Retief said: “One for our side.”