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I took with me for sporting purposes, as well as for the defence of the expedition, one large five-bore elephant-gun, also lent by Captain Burton; and of my own, one two-grooved four-gauge single rifle, one polygrooved twenty-gauge double, and one double smooth twelve-bore, all by John Blissett of High Holborn.
A twelve-bore is the best gun for use in China, from the fact that cartridges are everywhere procurable, whereas for other sizes they have frequently to be imported from home, although I must admit that a twenty-bore is preferable for snipe-shooting in warm weather, owing to the lightness of both gun and cartridges.
"Did you hear a shot fired somewhere?" he asked. "Yes. Among those trees." And Trenholme pointed. "It was a rifle, too," he added, with an eye at the twelve-bore. "So I thought," agreed the keeper. "Rather risky, isn't it, firing bullets in a place like this?" "I just want to find out who the ijiot is that did it. Excuse me, sir, I must be off." And man and dog hurried away.
He paddled into Hummil's saddle-room in his bare feet and uncased a twelve-bore rifle, an express, and a revolver. Of the first he unscrewed the nipples and hid them in the bottom of a saddlery-case; of the second he abstracted the lever, kicking it behind a big wardrobe. The third he merely opened, and knocked the doll-head bolt of the grip up with the heel of a riding-boot.
This had a faculty of catching sometimes, and requiring more or less labor before it could be thrown open; and of course it had to play Thad such a trick just then, when he seemed so desirous of making haste. Maurice, seeming to scent trouble of some sort from the strange actions of his chum, waited to snatch up the old faithful Marlin twelve-bore.
Carrying my twelve-bore fowling-piece loaded with a bullet in the right barrel and a charge of big shot in the left, the latter being full-choke, I was passing along the side of a steep hill at the foot of which, and some fifty feet below me, lay a frozen stream, when my dog-coolie, pointing downwards, cried, "Look at the fish!"
Moved by a species of vandalism, Bearwarden raised his twelve-bore, and fired an ordinary cartridge that he had not prepared for the dragons, at the space directly over the nearest forming prints. There was a brilliant display of prismatic colours, as in a rainbow, and though the impressions already made remained, no new ones were formed. "Now you have done it!" said Cortlandt.
A covey of partridges, about three parts grown, rise almost at our feet; for it is early August, and the deadly twelve-bore has not yet wrought havoc among the birds. On the right is a field of green turnips, well grown after the recent rains, and promising plenty of "cover" for sportsmen in September.
Then came the agonising suspense and the eight hours' search throughout the long summer evening. Late that night the father found the fair young form of his boy in a thick and tangled copse, there it lay under the silent stars, the face upturned in its last appeal to heaven; and close by lay the deadly twelve-bore which had been the cause of all the misery and grief that followed.
It wouldn't do to give raw hands blank-cartridges, because they'd find that out; but with this kind they might sit all day and fire at a baby asleep in its cradle and never disturb it, provided the baby was deaf. And he can't use his pardner's cartridges, for I gave that fellow a twelve-bore gun and his is a ten-bore." Phil grinned.
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