ON PLAIN AND PEAK 



again ! I sat on a point of rock that rose up in a 

 lonely sort of way from a steep stone-clad descent 

 a perfect playground of avalanches whilst the hail- 

 stones spattered on my face, and the cold numbed 

 my fingers till I could hardly feel the rifle. It was 

 the sort of day that makes one doubt, perhaps just 

 for one second, if in such weather chamois-shooting 

 is enjoyable ! 



Wechselberger was utterly despondent from the 

 first ; we should see nothing, he said ; the wind was 

 too bad for words. I was, as usual, hopeful. Some- 

 thing might come forward, get the wind of the 

 other guns, break away on the flank, and, as I was 

 on the extreme right, give me a chance. So I sat 

 and hoped, and restored some feeling to my trigger- 

 finger by keeping my hand inside my shirt. 



The luck was dead against us, however, as well 

 as the wind ! 



For hours we sat in a semi-frozen state and waited, 

 and then, two hundred yards below us, two chamois 

 appeared round a corner of rock. In any case, 

 foreshortened as they were owing to our being far 

 above them, it would have been a doubtful sort of 

 shot and the fact that some stunted bushes grew 

 between us and them, so that my bullet would have 

 had to find its way through the straggling branches, 

 made it quite useless to fire. I tried standing up, 

 but still they were safely "wood-bound," and to 



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