The shooting season is now closed. So far, that is, as concerns pheasfants and partridges. The general verdiét.on it will probably be summed up as patchy. Some good bags have been recorded, though as readfers are well aware, numbers do not necessarily mean sport. Snipe [shooting is perhaps one case in which numbers do count.
There still lingers in the writer's memory a day of old when the snipe were "in" at Weihsiwei. Speaking from memory, the bag was 76 rouple gnd tad we not run short of cartridges might have been even larger. One of the four guns was the new Commissioner-General of /Shanghai, who was as good a shot then-as the is an organizer and administrator now. In his new apointment his many friends at home wish him all good Tuck' and good That mere numbers count for little in any day's sport is exemplified by the memory of another Weihaiwei aay.
Away on the far boundary at we wai are some good lagoons.
in winter were happy hunting-[grounds for the officers of both His Majesty's now defunct Chinese Regiment and those of the Navy. the middle of & particularly' seve North China winter the writer and the late Admiral Sir George We vender, Bart, had been out to the lagoon' to try for geese and duck.
reach the village near the lagoons was at any time of year a somewhat tedious business. "But by means fof a plequet-boat we had done the! feet-going trip in comparative com fort. Comparative that is to say, for those for whom the rolling, even winter-waves in the bay have tucror.- 'There, was as usual in Winter halt a gale' bowing mwae big. swell on.
'A. keen north-east [90 [wind drove the curling tops of the big. seas frequently on board.
Having landed with difficulty we spent some unprofitable hours. try ing to. stalk or have put over large flocks of feeding geese. But all wild-fowl shooters are aware no bird Jocks such a fool but is Jeute aa the wily goose.
By the time we had eaten our sandwiches and tried to warm up the inner man from our flasks the short winter" afternoon was begin ning to close in. Three geese wai the sum of our efforts and a pretty rotten sum I remember we thought fat the time it was. Getting on board. the piquet-boat from. the dinghy we had towed was no joke. Having accomplished that acrobatic feat without being drowned were just settling down to a ould run back when the Admiral's coxswain prefacing his remark with the nable naval or military apology, briefly announced "Swans."
"Swans, eh! Where! How many? was the Admiral's comment.
Quickly we divested ourselves of big coats and got our glasses on to the spot. Yes. Sure enough they were swans. Ten of them." Rising and falling in graceful unconsciousness of our presence, five or six hundred yards away.
'A brief council-of-war was held.
[Then the Admiral issued his order Put briefly and I may add for the benefit of those who never knew the Admirat, forcibly, these were to jereep up at half speed to within 1150 yards of the swans on the water fi then to "let her go full speed ahead."
The writer, armed with a 10- bore, was to cower in the bows hop-for a shot. He soon gave up hoping. The Admiral sat astern milerly armed. The coxswain with the Admiral's second 12-bore elf somewhere amid-
All worked out "according we used to be told in 1915. Bot invariably the swans rose majestically ust about 100 yards away from the streaming nose Jof the diving piquet-boat. After the first attempt the swans settled Jagain not 500 yards away, but on jour beam.
The writer, with the best part lof a cold green wave down his back ledly to the stern de-
/But the Admiral—still dry—was not another icy bath. to be defeated. For more than an four we repeated "naval tactics." For all that cold depressing period {the swans laughed at our efforts. T confess it was exciting work. The Jpiequet-boat seemed like one of a shoal of porpoises. But i porpoises fare no more successful than we [that wild winter afternoon they /must occasionally, go very hungry.
As it began to get dark the mist jbcgan also to roll up.
One more dart," said the Adjmiral; "here, you take this," and lhe slung a Mauser pistol into his lcoxswain's hands.
"Full speed ahead!" he shouted the engineer.
'Away the piquet-boat went once more, diving and churning her way through the oncoming seas. Again "according to plan" the swans rose majestically at the usual hundred yards' interval. But this time they miscalculated the cunning—or the tuck of man.
T watched the burly coxswain put [the Mauser stock to his shoulder Jand heard him loose off some five jor six rounds at best speed into the "brown' of the swans. Miracle of miracles, one dropped!
'God Aimight," I heard him' nutter, "how the hell did Ido that T could not answer ror did I attempt to.
Imiral in great excitement swung the [piquet-boat round to pick up the idead swan I was nearly thrown overboard into the depths of the bay. But we retrieved the swan, Thanks to fog and mist it was Hong after Jgot back on True, the bag in number was conltemptible. (hree geese and one Jswan. But the day was one I shall never forget.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.