(5) After firing, watch the departing geese till nearly out of sight. Though apparently unhurt, one of their company may turn over, stone-dead, in the distance.
The day above described was selected, not only because it affords a typical illustration of our theme, but also because there had occurred during its course an extraneous incident which serves to amplify this exposition of the pursuit of the greylag goose.
Riding across the marisma, certain signs at once filled both our minds with fresh ideas. All around the ground was littered with cast feathers and other evidence proclaiming that this special spot was a regular resort of geese. We were crossing one of those slightly raised ridges of sand and grit which here and there intersect the otherwise universal dead-level of alluvial mud, and which ridges are known locally as _vetas_--tongues.
Now the nutritive economy of wild-geese, as already explained, requires a frequently replenished store of sand or grit. In wet seasons (the marisma being then submerged) the geese resort to the adjoining sand-dunes of Doñana to secure these supplies. But in dry winters they are enabled to obtain the necessary sand from these _vetas_; and it was to this particular spot that, to the number of many hundreds, the geese were evidently resorting at this period.
At once the measure of opportunity was gauged, and the arrangements necessary for its exploitation were made. Within three minutes a messenger was galloping homewards to summon a couple of men with spades and buckets to prepare a hole wherein one of us might lie concealed at daybreak. A pannier-mule to carry away the excavated material was also requisitioned, since the least visible change in the earth's surface would instantly be recognised by the geese as a danger-signal. Within a few minutes we had resumed our course, to continue the day's sport.
[Illustration: WILD-GEESE IN THE MARISMA.]
Next morning half an hour before dawn the writer reached the spot. It was pitch-dark and a dense fog prevailed. By what mental process my guides directed an unerring course to that lonely hole in the midst of a pathless and practically boundless waste passes understanding. Such piloting (without aid of compass or even of the heavenly bodies--the usual index on which marshmen rely) seems to indicate a point where intellect and instinct touch; or perhaps rather a survival of the latter quality which, in modern races, has become obsolete through disuse. Among savage races that faculty of instinct is markedly prominent, indeed the master-force; but there it has been acquired (or retained) at the cost of intellect, which is not the case with our Spanish friends--they possess both qualities. But place the best intellects of Madrid, or Paris, or London in such conditions--in darkness, or fog, or in viewless forest--and not one could hold a straight course for half-a-mile. Within ten minutes each man would be lost, devoid of all sense of direction. That is part of the price of the higher civilisation--the loss of a faculty which need not clash with any other. Of course where people live with a telephone at their ear, with electric trams and "tubes" close at hand, where a whistle will summon an attendant hansom and two a taxi-meter--or, as _Punch_ suggested, three may bring down an airship--well, in such case, those modern "advantages" may be held to outweigh the loss of a primitive natural faculty.