'275 Rigby, as a matter of fact,' Nicholas corrected him, but Boris
snorted.
'It is exactly the same cartridge - just your English bloodiness must
call it something else.' He grinned. 'It wilt push a 150 grain bullet
out there at 2800 feet per second.
It is a good rifle, one of the best.'
'You will never know, my dear fellow, how much your approval means to
me,'Nicholas murmured in English, and Boris chuckled as he handed the
rifle back to him.
'English jokes! I love your English jokes.'
When Nicholas left camp carrying the little rifle in its slip case,
Royan followed him down to the river and helped him fill two small
canvas bags with white river sand. He laid them on top of a convenient
rock and they formed a firm but malleable rest for the rifle as he
settled it over them.
Using the open hillside as a safe back'stop, he 'stepped out two hundred
yards and at that range set up a cardboard carton on which he had taped
a Bisley'type target. He came back to where Royan waited and then
settled down behind the rock on which the weapon lay.
Royan was unprepared for the report of the first shot from the dainty,
almost feminine-looking rifle. She jumped involuntarily, and her ears
sang.
'What a horrible, vicious thing!' she exclaimed. 'How can you bring
yourself to kill lovely animals with a highpowered gun like that?' she
demanded.
'Rifle,' he corrected her, as he noted the strike of the shot through
his binoculars. 'Would it make you feel better if I used a low-powered
rifle, or beat them to death with a stick?'
The shot had struck three inches right and two inches low. As he
adjusted the telescopic sight he attempted to explain. 'An ethical
hunter does everything in his power to kill as swiftly and as cleanly as
is possible, and that means stalking in as close as he is able to do,
using a weapon of adequate power and sighting it the best way he knows
how.'
His next shot struck exactly on line but only an inch above the
bull's-eye. He wanted it to shoot three inches high at that range. He
worked on the sight again.
'Gun or rifle, but I don't understand why you would want to deliberately
kill any of God's creatures,' she protested.
'That I can never explain to you.' He aimed deliberately and fired once.
Even through the lower magnification of the sight lens he could see that
the bullet had struck exactly three inches high.
'It is something to do with an atavistic urge that few men, no matter
how Cultured and civilized they deem themselves, can deny completely.'
He fired a second time.
'Some of them work it out in the board room, others on the golf course
or the tennis court, and some of us on a salmon river, in the ocean
deeps or in the hunting field.'
He fired a third shot, merely to confirm the previous two, and then went
