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On the fifth anniversary of her wedding day Susan's daughter was born, and the whole household welcomed the tiny Josephine, whose sudden arrival took all their hearts by storm. "Take your slangy, freckled, roller-skating, rifle-shooting boys and be off with you!" said Susan, over the hour-old baby, to Billy, who had come flying home in mid-morning.
On the plains between and adjacent to the Ganges and the Jumna, for two thousand years herds of black-buck, or sasin antelope, have roamed over cultivated fields so thickly garnished with human beings that to-day the rifle-shooting sportsman stands in hourly peril of bagging a five-hundred-rupee native every time he fires at an antelope.
Above it there is a portion of the old vicarage buildings, graced in front with various articles, the most prominent being a string of delapidated red jackets; right facing it we have the sable Smithsonian Institute, flanked with that gay and festive lion which is for ever running and never stirring; below there are classic establishments for rifle-shooting, likeness taking, and hot pea revelling; and ahead there is the police station.
Leaving the Prince to amuse himself and delight his followers with his skill in rifle-shooting at a mark chalked out on the rocks, I continued my explorations. The result is, perhaps, better explained to the reader in the words of an older and more experienced observer. Carless says "The scene was singular.
The C.O. and most of the officers went by motor-'bus through to Philosophe to reconnoitre the new line; the rest of the Battalion set out under Captain Burnett to march. The previous evening had been spent in celebrating our rifle-shooting victories and we felt like anything rather than marching twenty miles under a blazing July sun.
The Volunteer movement was a national glory. Had we any part in it? The last question touched me on the point of honour. In those days Harrow was the best School in England for rifle-shooting.
It was accordingly rare to meet with a good rifle-shot fifty years ago. Rifle-shooting was not the amusement sought by Englishmen, although in Switzerland and Germany it was the ordinary pastime. In those countries the match-rifle was immensely heavy, weighing, in many instances, 16 lbs., although the bullet was exceedingly small.
Like other similar anecdotes, this is told of a good many different frontier heroes; the historian usually showing a delightful lack of knowledge of what is and what is not possible in hunting, tracking, and fighting. However, the utter ignorance of even the elementary principles of rifle-shooting may not have been absolutely confined to the historians.
I only wanted to take you in my round. Are you all right?" "Right as a trivet, sir; only I am getting awful short of ammunition. I don't want to keep on potting these 'ere fellows, but somehow I took to rifle-shooting. There's some fun in hitting a mark at a distance, and that's the only thing I ever got a kind word for from old Tipsy. He said I could shoot."
When he wanted to point his instrument exactly to a star he was confronted with precisely the same difficulty as is met in gunnery and rifle-shooting. The sights and the object aimed at cannot be in focus together, and a great deal depends on the form of sight.
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