Page:The Naval Officer (1829), vol. 2.djvu/37

 ducks and geese for wild; in short, such was our hurry and confusion—leaping ditches, climbing dykes, and fording swamps—that Buffon himself would never have known the difference between a goose and a peacock. Our game bags were as capacious as our consciences, and our aim as good as our appetites.

The peasants shut all their poultry up in their barns, and very liberally bestowed all their curses upon us. Thus all our supplies were cut off, and foraging became at least a source of difficulty, if not of danger. I went on shore with our party, put a bullet into my fowling-piece, and, as [ thought, shot a deer; but on more minute inspection, it proved to be a four months' calf. This was an accident that might have happened to any man. The carcass was too heavy to carry home, so we cut it in halves, not fore and aft down the back bone, as your stupid butchers do, but made a short cut across the loins, a far more compendious and portable method than the other. We marched off with