Eager for the attack, they were busily employed in preparations for it. Horses were unsaddled and tethered among the bushes, guns piled or rested against the boughs, wood collected, fires lighted, and dagger-knives whetted, ready to rip open and quarter the game. The leaders only stood apart, under a spreading tree. They had a grave duty to perform in apportioning the spoils among those who had been successful in the day's sport. This was done with great exactness and the perfect equality existing among all ranks on these occasions. It was Robin Hood and his merry men all through; or might have been taken for an episode of Sarde banditti life, except that, our party being all honest fellows, there was no plunder to divide. By the laws of the chase in Sardinia, the hunter to whose gun an animal falls is entitled exclusively to some distinct portion, varying with the species of the game,—sometimes to the skin, sometimes to the choicest parts of the _roba interiora_, the intestines; the rest falls into the common stock. The award being made, such choice morsels, with rashers of hog and venison steaks, were grilled over the embers on skewers of sweet wood, and handed round, filled each pause in the attack on the cold provisions, portions being detached by the formidable _couteaux de chasse_ with which every man was armed; nor did English steel fail of doing its duty.
Though the party distributed themselves indiscriminately on the grass, they naturally fell into familiar messes, perfect harmony and good fellowship prevailing. But at times there was great confusion. Now, the horses, kicking and fighting, got free from their tethers, and there was a rush of the hunters to restore order; while the ravenous hounds, not content with the bones and fragments thrown to them, were making perpetual inroads on the circle of guests, and snatching at the morsels they were appropriating to themselves. The feast was drawing to a close, when Count T—— proposed the health of the foreigners associated in their sports, and the toast, with the reply, which, if not eloquent, was short and feeling,—“_Agli nobili cacciatori della Sardegna, e di noi forestieri li sozii amicissimi, benevolentissimi_,” &c., &c., &c., drew forth _ev-vivas_ which made the old woods ring to the echo. And now all started on their legs, and there was a rush to the guns as if scouts had suddenly announced that the woods were filled with enemies. As an hour or two of daylight still remained, a _bersaglio_, or match of shooting at a mark, had been arranged during the feast.