170 THE IMAGE OF WAR 



the shoulders, I had scored within a couple of hours 

 of starting. My only fear was that my luck was 

 too good to last, and that I should lose a good one 

 later on. After the gralloch we crossed the ridge 

 to the crater again, and left the buck to be fetched 

 by the shepherd's younger sons later on. Before 

 noon we came to a spring, or rather hole in a water- 

 course, and had our lunch. Giorgio produced a bag 

 of limpets he had secured in the early morning, 

 and I was surprised to find how good they were. 

 Strange to say, none of this family smoked, and 

 though this saved me tobacco, it w^as unsociable. 

 When I had finished my solitary pipe we went on, 

 and half an hour later we caught sight of two does, 

 not much more than two hundred yards away. I 

 watched them for some time with the glass. One 

 had a white patch across the loins — a curious varia- 

 tion, due no doubt to the existence at one time of 

 tame goats on the island. Next day I saw a doe 

 nearly black.^ I again pantomimed to Giorgio that 

 I would not shoot at females or small animals, and 

 we w^ent on round the north - west corner of the 

 island. 



When we had walked for some time longer, we 

 espied a magnificent buck, very grey, and with 

 horns which seemed to me enormous. It must be 

 remembered, however, that this was my first experi- 

 ence of wild goats, whose horns moreover seem 

 especially large to one fresh from chamois-shooting. 

 As a matter of fact these horns were probably 

 .no larger than those I had seen on Mr Gialerakis 

 live specimen at Milo. I daresay bigger have been 



1 Herr Reiser saw these odd-coloured does in '94. I saw them again — 

 in fact two black ones — in December '98. 



