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Updated: June 1, 2025
Would not the first of them who saw me wring my neck like a snipe's? Would not my absence itself be an evidence to them of my alarm, and therefore of my fatal knowledge? It was all over, I thought. Good-by to the Hispaniola, good-by to the squire, the doctor, and the captain. There was nothing left for me but death by starvation, or death by the hands of the mutineers.
It was the bird of all others that I longed to kill, and certainly to a lad the most difficult. Day after day I went down into the water-meadows; first thinking over the problem of the snipe's peculiar twisting flight. At one time I determined that I would control the almost irresistible desire to fire till the bird had completed his burst of zig-zag and settled to something like a straight line.
"A gentleman has been here, and left you this," replied the Mercury, holding out the note. "He said something about giving me a guinea; but I wasn't to let any body see." "It is his hand I know it!" cried Miss Sophia, and hurried up stairs to her own room. "You donkey!" growled Mr Daggles, who had overheard Snipe's proceedings; "you've done me out of another ten shillings.
For he was long, stooping, gaunt and spindle-shanked, his hands big and crippled with gout: his cheeks were red after an old man's fashion, covered with a crimson network like a pippin; his lips thin and not well hiding his few teeth; his nose long like a snipe's neb. In short, a shame and a laughing-stock to the Folk, and a man whom the kindreds had in small esteem, and that for good reasons.
"I'd say it was Abe Hawk." A bomb exploding in the smoking remnants could hardly have caused more consternation among the man hunters than the Snipe's naming of Abe Hawk. But however Doubleday's jaw set at the unwelcome surprise he was not the one to swerve in the face of any personal danger, and those with him were not men to bolt whatever adventure they embarked in.
Still, that was none of his business. "What is't you want to see him about?" he asked sullenly, while he looked up and down the street and everywhere but at the old man, and rubbed one bare foot slowly over the other. The old man looked pained, and much to Snipe's surprise, the question brought the tears to his eyes, and his lips trembled.
And he watched the moonlight on the rippling river, and the black heads of the firs, and the silver-frosted lawns, and listened to the owl's hoot, and the snipe's bleat, and the fox's bark, and the otter's laugh; and smelt the soft perfume of the birches, and the wafts of heather honey off the grouse moor far above; and felt very happy, though he could not well tell why.
"Very well," he answered, "but I must go into the garden to do it; there is not light enough here. It gets dark so soon now." Accordingly he stepped out through the window, and began to hunt for the pretty little feathers which are to be found at the angle of a snipe's wing. "Is that the new gun, Colonel Quaritch?" said Mrs. Quest presently; "what a beautiful one!"
And he watched the moonlight on the rippling river, and the black heads of the firs, and the silver-frosted lawns, and listened to the owl's hoot, and the snipe's bleat, and the fox's bark, and the otter's laugh; and smelt the soft perfume of the birches, and the wafts of heather honey off the grouse moor far above; and felt very happy.
"Then I shall be content," he replied, "if you will say nothing about it until you are well settled. After that I promise to send you a bill as long as a snipe's." She smiled, looked up brightly, and said, "You promise?" "I do." "If you don't keep your promise, I shall have to take severe measures. Don't fancy me without money. I could pay you now at least I think so."
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