Leaving the geese a few mornings' peace, on February 5 the authors together occupied that hole at dawn. It proved a brilliant morning with a fine show of geese. As each pack came in, we took it in turns to give the word whether to fire or not. In the negative case, our eyes sank gently below the surface of the earth, and crouching down we heard the rush of wind-splitting pinions pass over and behind--probably to offer a fairer mark when they next wheeled round. Then two, and often three, great geese came hurtling downwards, to fall with resounding thuds behind. Few mistakes occurred this morning and scarce a chance was missed. But never could we succeed in working-in the two doubles at once! The cramped space forbade that. The hole, having been dug for one, gave no freedom of action for two guns; its floor, moreover, had now become a compound of sticky glutinous clay a foot deep, and that further hampered movements. Only one gun could work the second barrel. After each shot, one of us jumped out and propped up the fallen geese as decoys. To leave them lying about all-ends-up has a disastrous effect. Ere the "flight" ceased we had five-and-twenty greylags down around our hide, besides several others that had fallen at some distance, duly marked by the keepers who now galloped off to gather these--say two mule-loads of geese. The discovery of that lonely "sanding-place" had had a concrete reward. [Illustration] CHAPTER XI WILD-GEESE ON THE SAND-HILLS Flanking the marisma and separating it from the dry lands of Doñana, there rises rampart-like a swelling range of dunes--the biggest thing in the sand line we have seen on earth. For miles extend these mountains of sand, unbroken by vestige of vegetation or any object to relieve one's eyesight, dazzled--aye, blinded--by that brilliantly scintillating surface, set off in vivid contrast by the azure vault above. Should a stranger, on first seeing those buttressed dunes, be seriously informed that their naked summits constitute a favourite resort of wild-geese, he might reasonably suspect his informant's sanity, or at least wonder whether his own credulity were not being tested. Yet such is the fact--one of the surprises that befall in Spain, the _pays de l'imprévu_. The paradox is explained by the stated necessity in wild-geese to furnish their gizzards with store of grit or sand for digestive purposes.