There was
another spell of eerie quiet, and then it seemed the world was changing. The clouds were drifting apart, and I
suddenly saw a brilliant star-sown patch of sky. Then the whole horizon turned from
velvet-black to grey, grey rimmed in the east with a strip of intense yellow
light. I looked behind me and could see
the outlines of the low coast, with blurs which I knew were woods, and with one
church-steeple pricking fantastically into the pale brune.
It was the
time for the geese, and in an instance there were on us. They came in wedge after wedge, shadowy as
ghosts against the faintly flushing clouds, but cut sharp against the violet
lagoon of clear sky. They were not
babbling, as they do in an evening flight from the fields to the sea, but
chuckling and talking low to themselves.
From the sound, I knew they were pink-foot, for the white fronts make a
throatier noise. It was a sight that
always takes my breath away, this multitude of wild living things surging out
of the darkness and the deep, as steady in their discipline as a Guards
battalion. I never wanted to shoot and I
never shot first; it was only the thunder of Samson’s 12-bore that woke me to
my job.
An old gander,
which was the leading bird in one wedge, suddenly trumpeted. Him Samson got; he fell with a thud five
yards from my head, and the echo of the shot woke the marshes for miles. It was all our bag. The birds flew pretty high, and Peter John
had the best chance, but no sign of life came from his trench. As soon as the geese had past, and a double
wedge of whistling widgeon had followed very high up, I walked over to
investigate. I found my son sitting on
his mud rampart with a rapt face. “I
couldn’t shoot,” he stammered; “they were too beautiful.”
From: John Buchan, The Island Of Sheep. London, Hodder & Staughton, 1936.
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