The Ruby Sword. Mitford Bertram

only gunner, too—Why, all this ‘gallery’ is bound to get on my nerves.”

      “Never mind—you can put it down to your fall, if you do miss a lot,” suggested Nesta.

      “Well, we’d better start soon, and not go too far either, for I shouldn’t wonder if this evening turned out as bad as last,” said Upward, rising from table. “Khola—Call Bhallu Khan.”

      The bearer replied that he was in front of the tent.

      “So this is the man whose sharp hearing was the saving of my life?” said Campian, as the head forester extended his salaam to him—And he put out his hand.

      The forester, a middle-aged Pathân of the Kakar tribe, was a fine specimen of his race. He looked picturesque enough in his white loose garments, his head crowned with the “Kulla,” or conical cap, round which was wound a snowy turban. He had eyes and teeth which a woman might have envied, and as he grasped the hand extended to him, the expression of his face was pleasing and attractive in the extreme.

      “By Jove, Upward, this man is as different a type to the ruffians who came for me last night as the proverbial chalk and cheese simile,” remarked Campian, as they started for the shooting place. “They were hook-nosed scoundrels with long hair and the expression of the devil, whereas this chap looks as if he couldn’t hurt a fly. He has an awfully good face.”

      “Oh, he has. Still, with Mohamedans you never can be absolutely certain. Any question of fanaticism or semi-religious war, and they’re all alike. We’ve had too many instances of that.”

      “Oh, come now, Ernest. You mustn’t class good old Bhallu Khan with that sort of native,” struck in his wife. “If there was any sort of rising I believe he’d stand by us with his life.”

      “I believe so too. Still, as I say, with Mohamedans you can never tell. Look, Campian, this is where we found you last night. Here’s where you were lying, and here’s where the water came up to during the night.”

      Campian looked somewhat grave as he contemplated the jagged edge of sticks and straws which demarcated the water-line, and remembered that awful advancing wave bellowing down upon him.

      “Yes—It was a near thing,” he said—“a very near thing.”

      But a word from the forester dispelled all such weighty reflections, and that word was “Chikór!”

      In and out among the grass and stones the birds were running—running. The more they were shouted at the more they ran. At last several of them rose. It was a long shot, but down came one.

      This was repeated again and again. All the shots were long shots, and there were as many misses as birds. There were plenty of birds, but they persistently forebore to rise.

      “Now you see why I’m not keen on chikór shooting, old chap,” said Upward, as after a couple of hours this sport was voted hardly worth while. And subsequently Bhallu Khan expressed the opinion to his master that the strange sahib did not seem much of a shikari. He might have made quite a heavy bag—there were the birds, right under his feet, but he would not shoot—he would wait for them to rise—and they invariably rose much too far off to fire at with any chance of bringing them down.