Page:Ballantyne--The Battery and the Boiler.djvu/252

 "I don't know; Meerta knows. Why?"

"Because your name may be marked on them. Come, let us go back at once and see. Besides, we are wasting time, for you know I was sent out to shoot some ducks for dinner."

Rising as he spoke, Robin shouldered the shotgun which had been supplied from the robbers' armoury, and, descending with his little companion towards the lake, soon began to stalk the birds as carefully as if he had been trained to the work by a Red Indian. Stooping low, he glided swiftly through the bushes, until he came within a hundred yards of the margin of the lakelet, where a group of some thirty or forty fat ducks were feeding. Letta had fallen behind, and sat down to watch.

The distance being too great for a shot, and the bushes beyond the spot which he had reached being too thin to conceal him, Robin lay flat down, and began to advance through the long grass after the fashion of a snake, pushing his gun before him. It was a slow and tedious process, but Robin's spirit was patient and persevering. He screwed himself, as it were, to within sixty yards of the flock, and then fired both barrels almost simultaneously. Seven dead birds remained behind when the affrighted flock took wing.

"It is not very scientific shooting," said Robin,