Thus ended a successful day, on which Fortune had favoured us, on several occasions, in finding the game in accessible situations. Such good luck does not always, nor even often, await the bustard-shooter; and even when it does, there still remains the real _crux_--the quick intuition of the requisite strategical movements and their successful execution.
The chimes of San Miguel were already ringing out the summons to even-song. Graceful figures in dark lace and mantillas hurried across the palm-shaded Plaza, as two Ingléses (_sus servidores de ustedes_) rode out of the city on an April afternoon.
It was rather for a ride than with any special sporting object in view that we set out. Yet, as is always the case in Spain, the guns were slung behind the saddle, and we remembered that, only a few days before, one of us had encountered a band of thirteen bustards--a dozen of which should still be basking on the green corn-lands of Santo Domingo, within a league of the _octroi_ boundary.
The binoculars, however, swept the swelling grounds without disclosing any occupants more important than a group of grey cranes and a pair of partridges indulging in vernal flirtations, careless of a kite which hovered hard by.
[Illustration: THE BUSTARD-SHOOTER--TRIUMPH!]
Beyond the corn-land lay undulated _manchones_, or fallows, clothed with a short growth of grass and thistles, and here on the summit of a flat-crowned knoll, a mile away, we descried a band of eight bustards. Hardly could a more unfavourable spot be selected. Their sentries commanded every visible approach, and we advanced in Indian file to reconnoitre, with the conviction that any operation must be in the nature of a forlorn hope. But a skill and rapid perception of the least advantage, worthy of a field-marshal, were at work, directed against the hapless eight. Riding circuitously around the game, we had approached as near as prudence allowed--some 300 yards, when an almost imperceptible depression served for a few moments to screen us from their view. Hardly had the last head sunk below the sky-line than one of the two guns rolled out of the saddle, passing the reins to his companion, who, in ten more yards, had reappeared to the already suspicious bustards. By the invaluable aid of a tiny furrow, worn by the winter's rains, but barely a foot in depth, No. 1 managed to worm a serpentine progression to the shoulder of the hill,--a point some 100 yards up the gentle slope, and barely twice that distance from the game,--while No. 2, slowly encircling the birds at 200 yards radius, gradually contracting and in full view, gained the reverse of the hill. Twice the big sentry had given the warning to "be ready"; as often the hunter widened his course till suspicion was allayed. Critical moments these, when success or failure depend upon a thread: upon instant diagnosis of what is passing in one's opponent's mind, divining, so to speak, his intentions before he has actually perfected them, or even decided himself.