A whirling, floating massed army

In the early 1990s — before I had a dog but well after I was completely bitten by the wildfowling bug — I remember staring at a teal that had skimmed over my head and fallen to a single shot about 100m behind. It had made it to a creek and into fast-flowing tidal waters. From there, it was heading out to sea at a rate I thought I could manage if I swam really hard.

Knowing that to lose a bird was akin to murder, adultery, dishonouring thy father and mother and against most of the other Ten Commandments, and being young and foolish, I was in the process of stripping off to go in pursuit. At the point at which I was in my socks but little else, a mysterious and magical apparition appeared.

In a meticulously ordered, battleship-grey punt with the most enormous gun attached to an improbably thick rope, sat a man who resembled