For no precious hours are wasted in the Coto Doñana. Next day at early dawn, maybe, if the lagoon be our destination, or at any rate after a timely breakfast, off starts again the eager cavalcade, be it in quest of red deer or less noble quarry. Then all day in the saddle, from drive to drive, dismounting only to lie in wait for a stag, or trudge through the sage-bushes after partridge, or flounder through the boggy _soto_, beloved of snipe, with intervening oases for the unforgotten _bocadillo_.
If Vazquez be kind, he will take you one day to crouch with him behind his well-trained stalking-horse, drawing craftily nearer and nearer to where the duck sit thickest, till, straightening your aching back, you have leave to put in your two barrels, as Vazquez lays low some twenty couples with one booming shot from his four-bore, into the brown.
[Illustration: EGRET-HERONRY AT SANTOLALLA, COTO DOÑANA.
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY H. R. H. PHILIPPE, DUKE OF ORLEANS.]
But one morning surely a visit must be paid to the sandhills. Caraballo will call you at 4 A.M., and soon after you will be jogging over the six or eight miles which separate the "Palacio" from that morning _rendezvous_ of the greylag. The stars still shine brightly as you dismount at the foot of the long stretch of dunes. A few minutes' trudge will deposit you in a round hole dug deep in the dazzling white expanse the day before; for a hole too freshly dug will expose the damp brown sand from below, staining the spotless surface with a warning blotch, and causing the wary geese to swerve beyond the range of your No. 1 shot. It is still dark as you drop into your hole. Gradually the sky grows greyer and lighter, till the sun rises from the round yellow rim of the blue morning sky. Who shall describe the magic thrill of the first hoarse notes falling on your straining ear? The temptation to peep out is strong, but crouching deep down, you wait till the mighty pinions beat above you, and the first wedge of eight or ten sails grandly away in the morning sun. You judge them out of shot. But surely this second batch is lower down? Are they not close upon you? Why then no response to your two barrels? Was the emotion too great, or have you misjudged the speed of that easy flight or its distance through the crystal air? All the keener is the joy when, with heavy thump, your first goose is landed on the sand amid the tin decoys. When three or four lie there, Vazquez will send his fleet two-legged "water-dog" to set them up with twigs supporting their bills, to beguile more of their kind into line with the barrels. If the day be propitious, the sky will be dotted at times with geese in all directions. Now and again they will give you a shot, the expert taking surely three or four to the tyro's one. It is half-past eight, and you have sat in your hole close on two hours before Vazquez comes to gather the slain, to which he will add two or three more, marked down afar, and picked up as dead as the rest. Never have two of your waking hours passed so quickly. What would you not give to live them over again and undo some of those inexplicable misses? But one goose alone would amply repay that early start. Even four or five are all you can carry, and the twenty or thirty that our expert [who must be nameless] would have shot, will live to stock the world afresh.