I live to a hundred I shall ever forget that desolate and yet most
fascinating scene; it is stamped upon my memory. To the right and
left were wide stretches of lonely death-breeding swamp, unbroken and
unrelieved so far as the eye could reach, except here and there by ponds
of black and peaty water that, mirror-like, flashed up the red rays
of the setting sun. Behind us and before stretched the vista of the
sluggish river, ending in glimpses of a reed-fringed lagoon, on the
surface of which the long lights of the evening played as the faint
breeze stirred the shadows. To the west loomed the huge red ball of the
sinking sun, now vanishing down the vapoury horizon, and filling the
great heaven, high across whose arch the cranes and wildfowl streamed
in line, square, and triangle, with flashes of flying gold and the lurid
stain of blood. And then ourselves--three modern Englishmen in a
modern English boat--seeming to jar upon and look out of tone with that
measureless desolation; and in front of us the noble buck limned out
upon a background of ruddy sky.

_Bang!_ Away he goes with a mighty bound. Leo has missed him. _Bang!_
right under him again. Now for a shot. I must have one, though he is
going like an arrow, and a hundred yards away and more. By Jove! over
and over and over! "Well, I think I've wiped your eye there, Master
Leo," I say, struggling against the ungenerous exultation that in such
a supreme moment of one's existence will rise in the best-mannered
sportsman's breast.

"Confound you, yes," growled Leo; and then, with that quick smile that
is one of his charms lighting up his handsome face like a ray of light,
"I beg your pardon, old fellow. I congratulate you; it was a lovely
shot, and mine were vile."