Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART SIX CHAPTER 10
Stepan Arkadyevitch hit one at the very moment when it was beginning its zigzag
movements, and the snipe fell in a heap into the mud. Oblonsky aimed deliberately
at another, still flying low in the reeds, and together with the report of the shot, that
snipe too fell, and it could be seen fluttering out where the sedge had been cut, its
unhurt wing showing white beneath.
Levin was not so lucky: he aimed at his first bird too low, and missed; he aimed
at it again, just as it was rising, but at that instant another snipe flew up at his very
feet, distracting him so that he missed again.
While they were loading their guns, another snipe rose, and Veslovsky, who
had had time to load again, sent two charges of small-shot into the water. Stepan
Arkadyevitch picked up his snipe, and with sparkling eyes looked at Levin.
“Well, now let us separate,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, and limping on his left
foot, holding his gun in readiness and whistling to his dog, he walked off in one
direction. Levin and Veslovsky walked in the other.
It always happened with Levin that when his first shots were a failure he got hot
and out of temper, and shot badly the whole day. So it was that day. The snipe
showed themselves in numbers. They kept flying up from just under the dogs, from
under the sportsmen’s legs, and Levin might have retrieved his ill luck. But the more
he shot, the more he felt disgraced in the eyes of Veslovsky, who kept popping away
merrily and indiscriminately, killing nothing, and not in the slightest abashed by his
ill success. Levin, in feverish haste, could not restrain himself, got more and more out
of temper, and ended by shooting almost without a hope of hitting. Laska, indeed,
seemed to understand this. She began looking more languidly, and gazed back at the
sportsmen, as it were, with perplexity or reproach in her eyes. Shots followed shots
in rapid succession. The smoke of the powder hung about the sportsmen, while in
the great roomy net of the game bag there were only three light little snipe. And
of these one had been killed by Veslovsky alone, and one by both of them together.
Meanwhile from the other side of the marsh came the sound of Stepan Arkadyevitch’s
shots, not frequent, but, as Levin fancied, well-directed, for almost after each
they heard “Krak, Krak, apporte!”
This excited Levin still more. The snipe were floating continually in the air over
the reeds. Their whirring wings close to the earth, and their harsh cries high in the
air, could be heard on all sides; the snipe that had risen first and flown up into the
air, settled again before the sportsmen. Instead of two hawks there were now dozens
of them hovering with shrill cries over the marsh.
After walking through the larger half of the marsh, Levin and Veslovsky reached
the place where the peasants’ mowing-grass was divided into long strips reaching to
the reeds, marked off in one place by the trampled grass, in another by a path mown
through it. Half of these strips had already been mown.
Though there was not so much hope of finding birds in the uncut part as the cut
part, Levin had promised Stepan Arkadyevitch to meet him, and so he walked on
with his companion through the cut and uncut patches.
“Hi, sportsmen!” shouted one of a group of peasants, sitting on an unharnessed
cart; “come and have some lunch with us! Have a drop of wine!”
Levin looked round.
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