For gratifying indeed to fowler's pride it is to pull down in falling heap the smart pintails and brilliant shovelers, to bring off a right-and-left at geese, though, it may be, one had first to let a cloud of wigeon pass the silent muzzle. Such is individual taste, nor will the memory of that afternoon ever fade, although my score, when at 3.30 P.M. I was recalled, only totalled up to seventy-four ducks and four greylag geese. The recall was imperative, and I obeyed, though not without hesitation and doubt. Could earth provide a better place? "Yes," replies Vasquez, "in one hour the geese will be streaming in clouds up the Algaidilla and Caño Juncero. Come! there's no time to lose." Within an hour we had reached the spot. The water was four inches deep, with low cover of rushes. The revolving stool stood too high, so I knelt in the shallow, and within three minutes the first squad of geese came in quite straight. One I took kneeling, but had to jump for the second. Just as No. 2 collapsed, No. 1 caught me full amidships, knocking me sidelong and, rebounding, upset the stool and the bag of cartridges thereon! A nice mess, occurring at the very outset of one of those ambrosial half-hours seldom realised outside of dreams. Quickly I dried the cartridges as well as circumstances would admit, for pack after pack of geese hurled themselves gaggling and honking right in my face, and during the few brief minutes of the southern twilight, I reckoned I had twenty-three down--seven right-and-lefts--though in the darkness only seventeen could be gathered, the winged all necessarily escaping. [Illustration: WILD GEESE ALIGHTING AT FIFTEEN YARDS (Take the upper pair right-and-left, leaving the nearer geese for second gun.)]