300 THE IMAGE OF WAR 



" It's only a doe and a kid ! Oh ! no, it's a herd ! 

 There's a good buck ! " were his successive exclama- 

 tions. By this time I had picked them up also. 

 There were eleven in all, and two of them were bucks, 

 with the wide-sweeping divergent horns characteristic 

 of these ibex, but they struck me as more blue-grey 

 than those of Antimilo. Never shall I forget them, 

 and never, alas ! did I see them better. They were 

 fully alarmed and at gaze. We decided that a stalk 

 was impossible, and that all we could do was to attempt 

 a drive. We sent the lads to the left to make a circuit 

 and come upon them from behind, and crept forward 

 ourselves towards the beasts. Being on the sunny 

 side of the valley I must have been very conspicuous, 

 for the herd worked away uneasily from me over 

 the sky-line. Here, however, they were met face to 

 face by our beaters, and reappeared, but only to dash 

 at a tremendous pace down to the sea and round the 

 corner, never having been much, if at all, within half 

 a mile of us. I have always felt since that our 

 laziness was to blame for this discomfiture ; for if 

 one of us had gone with the men, he would probably 

 have had a chance at the shortest of ranges, for the 

 lads came out right among the herd. 



We now sent the "individual" back with a char- 

 acteristic 24-inch head which I had picked up, and 

 followed the same line as on the previous day. When 

 we reached the eastern cliffs my partner shirked, and 

 left me to go on alone. 



Even here at the foot of the cliffs were excellent 

 paths, and when I got nearly to the end of these the 

 lad made a good spy of two bucks in the sheer face 

 of cliff above us. Neither was as good as those of the 

 morning, one behig one of the light- coloured ones re- 



