Now that I was not in competition with his master he had become suddenly anxious that I should win, for in some mysterious way the news of that bet had spread, and my adversary was not popular amongst the keeper class.
"Here you come again," said Scroope, pointing to an advancing pheasant.
It was an extraordinarily high pheasant, flushed, I think, outside the covert by a stop, so high that, as it travelled down the line, although three guns fired at it, including Van Koop, none of them seemed to touch it.

Then I fired, and remembering Lord Ragnall's advice, far in front.
Its flight changed.

Still it travelled through the air, but with the momentum of a stone to fall fifty yards to my right, dead.
"That's better!" said Scroope, while Charles grinned all over his round face, muttering: "Wiped his eye that time." This shot seemed to give me confidence, and I improved considerably, though, oddly enough, I found that it was the high and difficult pheasants which I killed and the easy ones that I was apt to muff.

But Van Koop, who was certainly a finished artist, killed both.
At the next stand Lord Ragnall, who had been observing my somewhat indifferent performance, asked me to stand back with him behind the other guns.
"I see the tall ones are your line, Mr.Quatermain," he said, "and you will get some here." On this occasion we were placed in a dip between two long coverts which lay about three hundred yards apart.

That which was being beaten proved full of pheasants, and the shooting of those picked guns was really a thing to see.