226 THE IMAGE OF WAR 



and across the valley. The range was about a hun- 

 dred and forty yards, but as they were only moving 

 slowly I took a stern shot at the best. He gave a 

 tremendous bound, and, before he had gone many 

 yards, he sat down in attempting to ascend a rock, 

 and then rolled over the edge. I sent my Turk down 

 for him, but it proved rather a difficult business, the 

 Bosnian chamois, in the words of the song, being **A11 

 very fine and large." So I had a tedious wait till the 

 beast was pulled up and gralloched. The bullet had 

 gone almost right through the animal from end to 

 end, as I found it under the skin of the throat. 



We now moved off homewards, and in less than 

 half an hour we came right on a single chamois feed- 

 ing in an open glade in the forest. Though only 

 some hundred and fifty yards away he quietly looked 

 at us and went on feeding. This *' raised my dander 

 some," as the Americans say, so I dropped on my 

 knee and plumped a bullet into him, thus rudely 

 awakening him to the realities of life. He struggled 

 up, and out of the glade into the thicket, followed by 

 all my Turks in full cry, and shortly after I reached 

 camp myself they brought him in. 



These two bucks, which I may almost claim to have 

 bagged right and left (they fell to two consecutive 

 shots from a single rifle), proved to be very similar 

 in head — nice thick horns about 10 J inches long, 

 and taken together a trophy well above the average. 

 In the evening, and again next morning, we watched 

 herds of chamois on the various peaks surrounding 

 our bivouac. Then we rode off in the rain, and 

 climbed the Orufa mountain, on whose slopes the 

 wild pig had everywhere been rooting, to the summer 

 Gendarmerie post of Ljubingrieb, where we dried 



