“Look here, Allan,” said Scroope, “if you are going to beat your African friend you had better wake up, for you won’t do it by admiring the scenery or that squirrel on a tree.” So I woke up. Just at that moment there was a cry of “cock forward.” I thought it meant a cock pheasant, and was astonished when I saw a beautiful brown bird with a long beak flitting towards me through the tops of the oak trees. “Am I to shoot at that?” I asked. “Of course. It is a woodcock,” answered Scroope. By this time the brown bird was rocking past me within ten yards. I fired and killed it, for where it had been appeared nothing but a cloud of feathers. It was a quick and clever shot, or so I thought. But when Charles stepped out and picked from the ground only a beak and a head, a titter of laughter went down the whole line of guns and loaders. “I say, old chap,” said Scroope, “if you will use No. 3 shot, let your birds get a little farther off you.” The incident upset me so much that immediately afterwards I missed three easy pheasants in succession, while Van Koop added two to his bag. Scroope shook his head and Charles groaned audibly. Now that I was not in competition with his master he had become suddenly anxious that I should win, for in some mysterious way the news of that bet had spread, and my adversary was not popular amongst the keeper class. “Here you come again,” said Scroope, pointing to an advancing pheasant. It was an extraordinarily high pheasant, flushed, I think, outside the covert by a stop, so high that, as it travelled down the line, although three guns fired at it, including Van Koop, none of them seemed to touch it. Then I fired, and remembering Lord Ragnall’s advice, far in front. Its flight changed. Still it travelled through the air, but with the momentum of a stone to fall fifty yards to my right, dead. “That’s better!” said Scroope, while Charles grinned all over his round face, muttering: “Wiped his eye that time.” This shot seemed to give me confidence, and I improved considerably, though, oddly enough, I found that it was the high and difficult pheasants which I killed and the easy ones that I was apt to muff. But Van Koop, who was certainly a finished artist, killed both. At the next stand Lord Ragnall, who had been observing my somewhat indifferent performance, asked me to stand back with him behind the other guns. “I see the tall ones are your line, Mr. Quatermain,” he said, “and you will get some here.” On this occasion we were placed in a dip between two long coverts which lay about three hundred yards apart. That which was being beaten proved full of pheasants, and the shooting of those picked guns was really a thing to see. I did quite well here, nearly, but not altogether, as well as Lord Ragnall himself, though that is saying a great deal, for he was a lovely shot. “Bravo!” he said at the end of the beat. “I believe you have got a chance of winning your £5, after all.”