We went on searching. Between us we looked under every tree within a hundred yards of the clearing, north, south, east, and west, and I think we found most of them in the end. At the collecting-point there was a pile of pheasants as big as a bonfire.
'It's a miracle,' Claud was saying. 'It's a bloody miracle.' He was staring at them in a kind of trance.
'We'd better just take half a dozen each and get out quick,' I said.
'I would like to count them, Gordon.'
'There's no time for that.'
'I must count them.'
'No,' I said. 'Come on.'
'One...
'Two...
'Three...
'Four...'
He began counting them very carefully, picking up each bird in turn and laying it carefully to one side. The moon was directly overhead now and the whole clearing was brilliantly illuminated.
'I'm not standing around here like this,' I said. I walked back a few paces and hid myself in the shadows, waiting for him to finish.
'A hundred and seventeen... a hundred and eighteen... a hundred and nineteen... a hundred and twenty!' he cried. 'One hundred and twenty birds! It's an all-time record!'
I didn't doubt it for a moment.
'The most my dad ever got in one night was fifteen and he was drunk for a week afterwards!'
'You're the champion of the world.,' I said. 'Are you ready now?'
'One minute,' he answered and he pulled up his sweater and proceeded to unwind the two big white cotton sacks from around his belly. 'Here's yours,' he said, handing one of them to me. 'Fill it up quick.'
The light of the moon was so strong I could read the small print along the base of the sack. J. w. CRUMP, it said. KESTON FLOUR MILLS, LONDON SW17.
'You don't think that bastard with the brown teeth is watching us this very moment from behind a tree?'
'There's no chance of that,' Claud said. 'He's down at the filling-station like I told you, waiting for us to come home.'
We started loading the pheasants into the sacks. They were soft and floppy-necked and the skin underneath the feathers was still warm.
'There'll be a taxi waiting for us in the lane,' Claud said.
'What?'
'I always go back in a taxi, Gordon, didn't you know that?'
I told him I didn't.
'A taxi is anonymous,' Claud said. 'Nobody knows who's inside a taxi except the driver. My dad taught me that.'
'Which driver?'
'Charlie Kinch. He's only too glad to oblige.'
We finished loading the pheasants, and I tried to hump my bulging sack on to my shoulder. My sack had about sixty birds inside it, and it must have weighed a hundredweight and a half, at least. 'I can't carry this,' I said. 'We'll have to leave some of them behind.'