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excitement. For a moment she could not move, then she flung her barrel into the air, somewhere in the
direction of the birds, and tugged violently at the trigger. Nothing happened–she was pulling at the
trigger-guard. Just as the birds passed overhead she found the triggers and pulled both of them
simultaneously. There was a deafening roar and she was thrown backwards a pace with her collarbone
almost broken. She had fired thirty yards behind the birds. At the same moment she saw Flory
turn and level his gun. Two of the pigeons, suddenly checked in their flight, swirled over and dropped
to the ground like arrows. Ko S’la yelled, and he and Flo raced after them.
‘Look out!’ said Flory, ‘here’s an imperial pigeon. Let’s have him!’
A large heavy bird, with flight much slower than the others, was flapping overhead. Elizabeth did
not care to fire after her previous failure. She watched Flory thrust a cartridge into the breech and
raise his gun, and the white plume of smoke leapt up from the muzzle. The bird planed heavily down,
his wing broken. Flo and Ko S’la came running excitedly up, Flo with the big imperial pigeon in her
mouth, and Ko S’la grinning and producing two green pigeons from his Kachin bag.
Flory took one of the little green corpses to show to Elizabeth. ‘Look at it. Aren’t they lovely
things? The most beautiful bird in Asia.’
Elizabeth touched its smooth feathers with her finger tip. It filled her with bitter envy, because she
had not shot it. And yet it was curious, but she felt almost an adoration for Flory now that she had
seen how he could shoot.
‘Just look at its breast-feathers; like a jewel. It’s murder to shoot them. The Burmese say that when
you kill one of these birds they vomit, meaning to say, “Look, here is all I possess, and I’ve taken
nothing of yours. Why do you kill me?” I’ve never seen one do it, I must admit.’
‘Are they good to eat?’
‘Very. Even so, I always feel it’s a shame to kill them.’
‘I wish I could do it like you do!’ she said enviously.
‘It’s only a knack, you’ll soon pick it up. You know how to hold your gun, and that’s more than most
people do when they start.’
However, at the next two beats, Elizabeth could hit nothing. She had learned not to fire both barrels
at once, but she was too paralysed with excitement ever to take aim. Flory shot several more pigeons,
and a small bronze-wing dove with back as green as verdigris. The jungle fowl were too cunning to
show themselves, though one could hear them cluck-clucking all round, and once or twice the sharp
trumpet-call of a cock. They were getting deeper into the jungle now. The light was greyish, with
dazzling patches of sunlight. Whichever way one looked one’s view was shut in by the multitudinous
ranks of trees, and the tangled bushes and creepers that struggled round their bases like the sea round
the piles of a pier. It was so dense, like a bramble bush extending mile after mile, that one’s eyes
were oppressed by it. Some of me creepers were huge, like serpents. Flory and Elizabeth struggled
along narrow game-tracks, up slippery banks, thorns tearing at their clothes. Both their shirts were
drenched with sweat. It was stifling hot, with a scent of crushed leaves. Sometimes for minutes
together invisible cicadas would keep up a shrill, metallic pinging like the twanging of a steel guitar,
and then, by stopping, make a silence that startled one.