Wild Spain Part 29

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

WILDFOWLING IN THE WILDERNESS.

II.--A DRY SEASON (FLIGHT-SHOOTING).

For days the report had reached us of the myriads of aquatic birds that had settled in the marisma. The keepers at the distant Retuerta had pa.s.sed the word along to those nearer the boundary, and from these the news was transmitted by boatmen to our factotum at San Lucar. Every day the exhortation to come became more and more urgent--"come at once, or in a few days the geese will have devoured every blade of aquatic weed, every green thing that remains, and will perforce be obliged to shift to other quarters." But come we could not. The 29th November was the day previously fixed for opening the campaign, and to cross the Guadalquivir before that date was not possible. Some of our party were coming out by P. and O. to Gibraltar, others by the quicker route of the _Sud_ express. With that malignant perversity of fate that ever seems to s.n.a.t.c.h from us the realization of one's ideal, we had, this year, fixed the day a week too late.

Mid-November was already past; autumn had given place to winter, yet not a drop of rain had fallen. Since the scorching days of summer the fountains of heaven had been stayed, and now the winter wildfowl from the north were pouring in only to find the marisma as hard and arid as the deserts of Arabia Petraea. They found not what they sought--instinct was at fault. True to their appointed season came the dark clouds of pintail, teal, and wigeon, the long skeins of grey geese; but where in other years they had revelled in shallows rich in aquatic vegetation, now the travellers find in their stead a calcined plain devoid of all that is attractive to the tastes of their tribe. For the parched-up soil, whose life-blood has been drained by the heats of the summer solstice, whose plant-life is burnt up, remains panting all the autumn through for the precious moisture that comes not. The carcases of cattle and horses that have died of thirst and lack of pasturage strew the plains; the winter-sown wheat is dead ere germination is complete.

In such years of drought many of the newly-arrived wildfowl--especially pintails--pa.s.s on southwards (into Africa) not to return till February; but numbers crowd into the few places where the precious element--water--still exists. Such a spot is the Retuerta; and along its ten-mile length of ta.s.selled sedge and 30-foot bamboo are concentrated such hosts of wildfowl as seldom entrance the sportsman's eye. In this favoured nook in distant Andalucia let us now live again a few of those eventful days.

At length our party of ten guns are a.s.sembled in the shooting-box. Never before, at this season, have we ridden those thirty miles across so thirsty a land. Vasquez and his _confreres_ received us reproachfully--Why have we not come sooner? But are all the geese gone?

_Hay, hay anseres, pero no la decima parte de que habia_--"there are some geese," he replies, "but not the tenth part of what there were."

Then a smile came over his Red-Indian countenance, as he added--_pero todavia hay para divertirse_--"there are yet enough for sport." When Vasquez reckons there are enough for sport we know that, allowing for Andalucian exaggeration, there will be hot barrels before the day is done. What he calls, in his expressive language, a _salpicon_--a sprinkling, may mean several acres in a flock; a _punado_, or handful, a thick ma.s.s of several thousand! When he talks of a _tiro regular_--an _ordinary_ shot, we know he means about thirty couples of mallards with one barrel. For Vasquez has striven for a living, as his fathers did before him, with the ducks of these wilds; and when he _did_ let off his ponderous blunderbuss it was at very close quarters, and meant execution. Quant.i.ty was his desideratum, for he had to make a large bag for little money, depending on others to realize his spoils in the distant market, and, as usual, much of the hard-earned coin stayed in the hands of middlemen. Thus Vasquez, with other marsh-men, was tempted by our offer of a fixed wage, and has for years been keeper on the marisma, where his reed-thatched _choza_ is barely visible amidst waving sedges and bulrushes hard by the most favoured haunts of his aquatic charges. Vasquez cannot tell you who is Prime Minister at Madrid, and cares not whether England may wish to surrender Gibraltar to Spain; but he _can_ tell you whither that pack of duck, like a small cloud on the horizon, is hurrying to alight; he can point out to you the birds fresh come from the north, as distinguished from earlier arrivals, as he can also tell you when ducks, which, to the uninitiated, appear quite happy and content, are packing up, and will be gone with the morning's light.

He will take you where the snipe are in hundreds when you have searched their favourite haunts in vain; and will place you at dusk, if you have faith in him and wait till sunset, where the greylags will pa.s.s within ten yards. So Vasquez is a useful man, though he knows nothing of the great world outside of the Retuerta. We felt, nevertheless, that we were a week too late, and had perhaps lost the best chance of a century.

The plan of campaign was to line the northern end of the marsh for some five or six miles, placing a gun in each one of certain selected spots.

For this purpose, large casks are sunk at intervals, some well hidden among rushes, others in open pools; but in these latter cases the tubs were cunningly concealed by cut tamarisks and other water-plants.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

To place the guns in their respective tubs, extending over six miles of bog, and the nearest tub almost the same distance from our quarters, is a lengthy operation, necessitating a very early start. Long before dawn we were in the saddle. Dark and rough at first was the ride just preceding that impressive change--the lifting of night's mantle from the earth. Gradually grew these first rays, and soon the whole east was aglow, gleaming across parched plains, as the glorious morn awakened. To the enticing oasis of the Retuerta pushed forward the long cavalcade, but the sun was high ere all the strategical points could be simultaneously occupied. For it was arranged that each gunner should advance at a given signal to his post, and that no shot should be fired till all were in position. Of the difficulties and dangers in reaching those points, through marsh and quaking bog, we will not stop to speak; at length all were in place, and ducks already streamed overhead within half gunshot while we awaited the signal to open. Then from the distant land a shot resounded, and simultaneously, all along our line, rang out a merry fusillade; here comes my first chance, a pack of wigeon, straight for the tub. A bright-winged drake paid first tribute, and two more from "the brown" fall to the left. As fast as cartridges can be slipped into the breech they are required, and two guns are kept going continuously--now at a swinging flight of teal or swift garganey,[70]

then at the more stately pintails, next at a single shoveler-drake on his straight and hurried course. Now the ten-bore is useful for a string of mallards which are already seeking safer alt.i.tudes, and for a couple of curlews, for once at fault. But we need not recapitulate, even were it possible to remember, the rapid sequence of shots, which for an hour were almost continuous. Shots of every kind there offered--incoming, outgoing, to right and left, direct or oblique, and at every height and angle, acute, obtuse, and perpendicular. Now a flight of wigeon, skimming low on the water-level, suddenly fling themselves in one's face, all unseen till far too near; then from behind, with a rush as of a whirlwind, a trip of swift-winged teal or swifter garganeys almost take one's hat off, then "sky" like rockets, on seeing the danger--difficult to stop are these! At intervals, there is a variation, when, during the earlier part of the action, the files of grey geese are seen and heard as they sail along, looming so huge among the smaller fowl. They are not too high as, outward-bound, they cross our posts; but let them get _well_ over-head, as near as ever they will come, ere you open fire, or no mighty splash in the water behind will gratify your ear. The bulk of the shooting, however, is at files of duck speeding fast and straight in bee-lines overhead: high as a rule, mostly _very_ high, the sort of shot that, once learnt, can be generally pulled off--and satisfactory shots they are, requiring an infinite degree of _faith_ and forward allowance.

At the end of an hour the file-firing slackened, but still for another hour it continued fairly fast. The larger ducks and the geese had betaken themselves to the sea, or to the dried marisma respectively; but great numbers of wigeon and the smaller ducks still sought resting-places up and down the long Retuerta. Of the geese but few comparatively had fallen, though thousands were seen in air. Hardly had the firing commenced than these betook themselves to the dry marisma where they made shift to feed on the roots of the _castanuela_ (spear-gra.s.s). This circ.u.mstance, however, was foreseen, and troubled us little; it is the geese _coming in_ that offer sport, not the geese going out, and we well knew that before night they would be needing a cool draught at the pools of Retuerta.

At the end of two hours, the writer left his battery to collect his spoils; a goodly pile of ducks, besides three geese and two flamingoes, though perhaps not in due proportion to the heap of emptied cartridges.

About a quarter-mile away lay the sh.o.r.e, to which, during the mid-day interlude, I made my way through water, mud, and matted tamarisk. The nearer strand, where cattle had cropped the rush, was alive with snipe, while amidst the heavier covert beyond, numbers of teal had sought asylum. With these, and pa.s.sing ducks, there was plenty of employment, and at the end of an hour, when it was necessary to flounder back to the battery, I had exhausted my cartridges and formed sundry piles of slain--in all nineteen ducks, two geese (right and left) and over twenty snipe, besides a bittern and a few "various."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The sun was now lowering, and the return of the geese might be looked for. I had started none too soon on the return "plodge," for with the heavy walking and yet heavier burden, I had hardly ensconced myself in my battery ere the welcome konk! konk! was audible, and some twenty greylags came gliding in. Straight for the sunken tub they held their course, and not till almost overhead did they descry the lurking gun.

Then with redoubled flaps they swerved off, changing the downward gliding flight for an upward movement; but, though for a moment they hung in air, yet, somehow, it took both barrels ere the leader collapsed. Shot after shot at what appeared a fatal range failed to stop them _clean_, and I decided to let the next come in even nearer. This time only three came drifting down. They pa.s.sed within shot, but I refrained; wheeled round the pool, and headed straight in; there was no mistake this time--the geese were not twenty yards off, and two of the three fell stone-dead. I breathed more freely now; and let the geese come in to a range that for any other fowl would be _too near_, holding even then well forward, and sundry heavy thuds on the darkening waters attested the success of these waiting tactics, and registered the death of another greylag or bean-goose. These latter came in singly, or in twos and threes, and are distinguishable by their harsher note and rather smaller size; the greylags average eight pounds, some old ganders turning the scale at ten. Every minute it became more difficult to see; night was closing in apace, but with it came more and more geese. The rattle of gunshots and rustling of strong pinions was incessant--hardly had one gone down than another flight swept in. At last the geese came silently; the call-note which during daylight announced their approach was now no longer uttered, and they drifted so fast on to the water that one only became aware of their arrival by the heavy ploughing splash as they alighted. Presently only those that came low against the dying after-glow in the west could be seen at all, and after a shot one had to listen for the splash that bespoke a kill. Gunshots now became fewer, a mere dropping fire, and in a few minutes more even this shooting at ghosts became no longer possible. Then came the splashing of horses, and I knew that Caraballo was coming to look for me, and a good line he took in the dark and featureless mora.s.s.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GREYLAGS--DAYBREAK.]

Half an hour later we were beginning to a.s.semble at the bonfire of blazing samphire-bushes which had been lighted as a beacon to gather around. The day ended with a slight _contretemps_: one of our party with his servant was missing. No answer could be obtained to our signals: nor on our arrival at the lodge were the lost ones there. Though there could be no danger, yet it would be most unpleasant for our friend to pa.s.s the night in the wilds without food or shelter. At ten o'clock keepers were despatched to scour the country, but it was four hours later ere Manuel (at 2 A.M.) returned with the luckless wanderers in charge. They had mistaken our beacon, and had steered for what proved to be a charcoal-burning miles away.

When the tale of slain had been told off, and Vasquez brought in the totals as 81 geese and over 300 ducks (besides sundries) for the day, we were inclined to forget those unresponsive greylags, and to imagine that, for flight-shooting, with 12-bores, at pa.s.sing fowl, such results were not to be obtained every day, nor in every land.[71]

Three other field-days followed with the wildfowl, besides two interludes with small-game, and a two-days snipe-shoot along the remote Rocina, which produced 353 snipe,[72] a few duck, teal, bitterns, and sundries: and, when these happy days were over, the total score stood:--

713 ducks.

247 wild geese.

402 snipe.

15 woodc.o.c.k.

161 partridge.

8 quail.

36 rabbits.

7 hares.

9 bitterns.

44 sundries.

Among "sundries" were included common and ruddy sheldrakes, gadwall and garganey, marbled ducks (a few), common and white-eyed pochards (several), many coots, an egret, stilts, and a pair of oyster-catchers.

AN ARCTIC WINTER IN SOUTHERN SPAIN.

Never in our experience of well-nigh a quarter of a century had such extremes of cold been known in this sunny land as those of December, 1890. Nor will the destruction wrought by that phenomenal winter be remedied for many a long year, as brown and blasted oliveyards, and thousands of acres of orange-groves, almost every tree cut back to the bole and grafted as a last resource, bear testimony.

Here, in a sporting sense, is the report of that winter, and its effects on fowl and fowling. _December 8th_, 1890.--Not a drop of rain fell this year till the 2nd inst., and the conditions for sport appeared as favourable as those of last year (already described above). Cold as Siberia was our ride to Vasquez's _choza_ (November 28), in the teeth of the bitter east wind which swept across the dry marisma, and cut into our very marrow.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate L.

REDSHANKS.

Page 393.]

_Valiente helada va caer este noche!_ say the keepers, and verily a terrible frost _did_ fall that night: for when Caraballo awakened us at six in the morning, the poor fellow's teeth chattered, his limbs shook, and he declared that never before had _Dios_ made so cold a morning.

My luck favoured me for once, and by lot, No. 5 was placed by the deeps of "El Jondon," flanked by miles of bamboo and cane-brakes of tropical dimensions. The oozes were covered with ice, at first so thick as almost to bear the horses; but as the water deepened, the ice broke and cut their fetlocks; so we had to seek our posts on foot, dry shot for the first time on record. It fell to me to fire the signal-shot, so I took an opportunity of sending to speedy end just nine teal with the two barrels. I had never before held the luckiest number; to-day I was in the _flor_ and the _nata_ of the fray; it will give some idea of the character of the sport this day that, at times, it was desirable to decline _all_ offers from the duck-tribe, and to reserve one's attention, and cartridges, exclusively for the geese.

The solid ice around my battery lent a novel feature to experiences of wild sport in Spain. The ducks, even heavy mallard and pintail, rebounded from the ice-bound surface; and a goose, falling obliquely, also slid for twenty yards before remaining still. No ducks broke the frozen coverlet; but geese came crashing down through the ice, each making itself a captive in its own chasm. I was soon surrounded by these ice-bound prisoners, bringing down, during the day, over thirty greylags, besides some eighty ducks. Many of these, however, fell in the tall canes and reed-brakes behind, and as we shot till well after dark, it was impossible to gather all--even of the dead. The whole bag, which, had the shooting been uniform, should have been much greater, amounted to 363 ducks and 72 geese, besides snipe and 39 "various."

A note on the subsequent movements of the wildfowl may be an appropriate complement to this chapter. During the severe weather of December, most of the ducks disappeared. At the New Year comparatively few remained, and a second shoot resulted, as regards wildfowl, in failure. This, however, did not greatly disturb us--other game demanded attention, and we knew our web-footed friends had only bid us _au revoir_. "They will return at the end of February," a.s.serted Vasquez; and return they did, to find the sunken tubs at El Jondon and along the cane-brakes of Quebrantiero again "occupied in force"--once more along the line rang out a fusillade.

The transit of the aquatic birds to and from Africa often presents remarkable spectacles. During several days at this season (February--March), while cruising in the Straits, the sea has been sprinkled in every direction--both Atlantic and Mediterranean--with bands of duck coming off from the African sh.o.r.e and skimming low on the waves on a northerly or north-westerly course. They do not proceed direct to the Far North, but linger for some days on the Spanish side.

Here, early in March, their numbers almost equalled those of November; that is of ducks, for the geese had almost entirely withdrawn. On March 5th clouds of wigeon gyrated at vast alt.i.tudes--mere specks in the upper air, while others a.s.sembled, ma.s.sed together in hordes on the water, _echando corros para irse_--arranging travelling parties, as Vasquez puts it: sure signs both, of the coming change. By March 10th fully four-fifths had disappeared; while on the 15th scarcely a duck of all their thousands remained, except of those species which habitually nest in Spain--_e.g._, mallards, sheld-ducks, &c., or which come there in spring expressly for that purpose, such as the white-eyed pochards, marbled and white-fronted ducks, and the like.

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

THE STANCHION-GUN IN SPAIN.

During wet winters in Spain, when marismas and submerged marshes form miniature seas, the customary methods of wildfowling are no longer of any avail. Opportunities of employing the _cabresto_ are few and far between: while flight-shooting on an area indefinitely extended is profitless and uncertain to the last degree. But the marismas, with their myriads of winter wildfowl, appeared to offer, during such seasons, an exceptional--indeed an ideal field for the use of the gunning-punt, and stanchion-gun.

During the wet winter of 1887-8, when we were constrained helplessly to contemplate floating flotillas, all, in effect, inaccessible to our guns--these tantalizing spectacles urged us to seek "some new thing." A gunning-punt with its artillery appeared to be the one thing needed, and with it, we felt confident that from fifty to a hundred duck might often be secured at a shot. Accordingly, in the autumn of that year (1888), we sent out from England boat, gun, and gear--in short, the complete equipment for "the wildfowler afloat."

The little craft duly reached the Guadalquivir in September; but here an unexpected difficulty arose. The Spanish custom-house took alarm. True, the little vessel was an entire novelty and an innovation; even in the Millwall Docks she had created some surprise, and here, she was incomprehensible. No such vessel had ever before floated on Spanish waters, and the official mind took time to consider. That oracle, after several weeks of cogitation, ordered the removal of the tiny craft from the obscure port of Bonanza to the full light of the custom-house at Seville. Here, after many more weeks of delay, it was solemnly declared that that white-painted six-foot barrel was "an arm of war"; that "the combination of boat and gun savoured of the mechanism of war"; and, lastly, that "the boat could not be permitted to pa.s.s the Customs until it had been _registered at the Admiralty_ as a ship of war," thus forming an integral part of the Imperial navy of Spain.

[Ill.u.s.tration]