Whenever It Got Bad I Was
Permitted To Put It Into The Cart Sent To Town Periodically, To Have
It Repaired, And Would Then Go Gunless For A Week Or Ten Days.
On one
of these occasions I one day saw a party of shoveller duck dibbling in
a small rain-pool at the side of the plantation, within a dozen yards
of the old moat which surrounded it.
Ducks always appeared to be
exceptionally tame and bold when I was without a gun, but the boldness
of those shovellers was more than I could stand, and running to the
house I got out the old blunderbuss, which I had never been forbidden
to use, since no one had ever thought it possible that I should want
to use such a monster of a gun. But I was desperate, and loading it
for the first (and last) time, I went after those shovellers.
I had once been told that it would be impossible to shoot wild duck or
anything with the blunderbuss unless one could get within a dozen
yards of them, on account of its tremendous scattering power. Well, by
going along the bottom of the moat, which was luckily without water
just then, I could get as near the birds as I liked and kill the whole
flock. When I arrived abreast of the pool I crept up the grassy
crumbling outside bank, and resting the ponderous barrel on the top of
the bank, fired at the shovellers at a distance of about fifteen
yards, and killed nothing, but received a kick which sent me flying to
the bottom of the foss.
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