The best days are those with a cloudy sky, and a south-westerly wind. On such occasions the birds often come in myriads, delighting the sportsman’s heart, testing his nerves, and filling his bag to repletion. When the object is to kill the greatest number possible, they are permitted to alight among the stools and collect together before the gun is fired; then the first discharge is followed rapidly by the second, which tears among their thinned ranks as they rise; and, if there be a second gun, by the third and fourth barrel, till frequently all are killed. The scientific and sportsmanlike mode is to fire before they alight, selecting two or three together and firing at the foremost. It is a glorious thing to see a flock of marlin or willet, or perhaps the chief of all, the sickle-bills, swerve from their course away up in the heavens, and after a moment’s uncertainty reply to the sportsman’s deceitful call and turn towards his false copies of themselves. As they approach, the rich sienna brown of the marlin and curlew seems to color the sky and reflect a ruddy hue upon surrounding objects; or the black and white of the barred wings of the willet makes them resemble birds hewn from veined marble. The sportsman’s heart leaps to his throat, as crouching down with straining eye and nerve, grasping his faithful gun, he awaits with eager anxiety the proper moment; then, rising ere they are aware of the danger, he selects the spot where their crowding bodies and jostling wings shut out the clouds beyond, and pours in his first most deadly barrel; and quickly bringing to bear the other as best he may among the now frightened creatures as they dart about, he delivers it before he has noticed how many fell to the first. Dropping back to his position of concealment, he recommences whistling, and the poor things, forgetting their fright and anxious to know why their friends alighted amid a roar like thunder, return to the fatal spot, and again give the fortunate sportsman a chance for his reloaded gun. It was for such glorious sport as this, with fair promise of success--for the flight was on, as the saying is, when the snipe are moving--that I prepared myself the next morning. Rising at earliest daybreak, a friend, the gunner, and myself sallied out to the blind, and having set out our stools, possessed our souls in patience for what might follow. A blind is another ingenious invention of the devil--as personified by a bayman, in pursuit of wild fowl--and is constructed by planting bushes thickly in a circle round a bench. Seated upon this bench and concealed from the suspicious eyes of the snipe by the dense foliage of the bayberry bushes, the sportsman, in comparative comfort, awaits his prey. In less civilized localities he hides himself among the long sedge grass, or scoops out a hole in the sand and lies at length upon a waterproof blanket.