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This is of every variety, from the bent pin fastened to a string, and the string fastened to a stick, which most of us began with, up to the elaborate and costly rods, reels and flies of the wealthy sportsmen. Boys, who seldom use reels, will find the bamboo, which is sold cheap, the lightest and strongest rod for general use. Hooks are of endless size and variety, as are fishing lines.
I laughed at them; but, after all, their amusing hallucination was nothing but the sportsman's instinct; and life would soon lose its charm for most of us, sportsmen or not, if we could no longer pursue the unattainable.
The absence of railways is a great factor in game-existence. The Congo Free State contains game and sporting possibilities on the unexplored uplands between the rivers, that are as yet totally unknown to sportsmen at large. We are accustomed to thinking of the whole basin of the Congo as a vast, gloomy and impenetrable forest. There is to-day in Africa a vast reserve supply of grand game.
Here is a man, a regular toff, and no error a man who knows such Ringmen as Robinson and White and yet he will speak to ordinary coves without exhibiting the least pride! Jerry has taken me round to the best haunts where gallant sportsmen assemble, and for some mysterious reason, his escort has secured for me the most flattering deference. Queer holes he knows by the score.
"Think of a second-lieutenant like me asking a swell like Evelyn! Why, his decorations make a perfect breastplate when he chooses to put them on. Not that it is a matter of choice. He only does it when he can't help it. He did so splendidly in South Africa." "I dare say he'd condescend to come," Lady O'Gara said. "Few sportsmen can resist the Castle Talbot duck-shooting."
Of course, I don't pretend for a moment that they all drink; but where the tendency to drink exists this is the kind of life to foster it. 'My husband was not obliged to live in chambers he had a home here. 'Yea; but young men, unless they are sportsmen, hate the country; and then, once in the London vortex, a man can't easily escape.
During the course of the meal, the Spaniard incidentally mentioned that on the previous night a tiger had broken into his enclosure, and injured a bullock so badly that he had been obliged to kill it, and he had little doubt the same beast would pay him another visit that night. This was good news to the travellers, all of whom were keen though not all expert sportsmen.
The situation was becoming very strained. I felt bound to interfere by some banal remarks about the scenery, and finally we arrived back at Ledstone and I got rid of them by conducting them to their rooms. It poured rain again before the sportsmen returned, and they were more or less wet and cross. Antony went straight to his room to change, and so did the two other decent men.
The egg takes its chance, coloured or not. Sportsmen would be very glad if pheasants would kindly learn by experience, and lay eggs of a hue invisible to the poaching rook or crow. Nor is this nest, that seems so slender and so delicately made, really so slender to the bird itself. To a man or woman, so many times larger than the nest, its construction appears intricate.
All sorts of bones could be found except skulls; but a citizen said, irreverently, that there had been an unusual number of "skull-hunters" there lately a species of sportsmen I had never heard of before. Nothing whatever is known about this place its story is a secret that will never be revealed. The oldest natives make no pretense of being possessed of its history.
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