210 RIFLE AND ROMANCE 



winding me, and dashed into the glen below. Then, at 

 last, a crackling of leaves uphill, and the huge yellow 

 rump of the stag, beyond which rose a grand pair of horns, 

 disappearing behind a mass of bamboo thicket. 



Rushing uphill I was just in time to see him cantering 

 along beyond me on the narrowest of little paths that 

 skirted a steep face of black, basaltic rock. 



The first shot missed ; but the second bullet was no 

 sooner despatched than he executed a series of extraordi- 

 nary leaps, head laid back, and fore feet literally pawing 

 the air, as he rushed over the brow of a tremendous khad 

 and disappeared. 



With a heavier rifle I doubt whether I should have got 

 along as I did ; but with the little Lee-Metford in my 

 hand, I was able to reach this spot soon enough to see my 

 stag laboriously crossing a spur about 200 yards below me, 

 and as I sat down for a steady shot he halted, nose to the 

 ground. 



A second later the sight rested once more on that broad 

 dark back ; a careful shot was despatched, and the stag, 

 reeling and straining an instant to face the hill, fell on his 

 side and rolled heavily against a tree dead. 



When I reached him I found that the first hit had cut his 

 throat close behind the angle of the jaw, thus accounting 

 for his strange " gambades," while the second had entered 

 his back about the middle, and close to the spine, both 

 being Eley's soft-nosed solid bullets propelled by cordite. 

 His antlers, which were massive and unusually deeply cor- 

 rugated, gave measurements right and left of 38 J and 39 

 inches, 9 inches just above the burr, and /J round the beam. 



I now left some of the men who were industriously 

 removing from their scanty loin-cloths the vicious black 

 seeds of that annoying vegetable the kussal> or spear-grass 

 to skin the stag and bring in his head ; and, the day 

 being yet young, at the advice of a Korku scout, who had 

 seen a bear, descended to cross the main valley. 



