MOUFFLON-STALKING IN CYPEUS 365 



mukhtar of his village, Kinousa, to send him if he 

 were able and willing to come. The old fellow was 

 both, and tramped into my camp at the close of a soak- 

 ing wet day quite cheery in spite of his being but 

 lightly clad and so drenched that the red of his fez 

 had run down his shirt. To me he seemed anything 

 but decrepit, and his face had the hawk-like expres- 

 sion I always like to see in my hunters. He owned 

 to sixty-seven — a mere trifle in comparison with my 

 octogenarian Turkish hunter in Herzegovina, Fezo 

 Zaklan. Anastasi surprised me considerably by tell- 

 ing me that he too had been with "the Captain" for 

 no less than twenty days. 



Next morning he shouldered my rifle, and led the 

 way at a good pace along the edge of a sanctuary, 

 and then up a ridge — the south end of Khorteri — 

 overlooking a glen, and motioned me to sit down. 

 Hardly had I done so when I heard a pair of jays 

 screaming on the opposite slope, and shortly after- 

 wards a sound which I did not consider referable to 

 those birds. Five minutes elapsed, and then, hearing 

 a stone roll to my left, I glanced that way and saw 

 a young moufHon ram coming towards us. I reached 

 for the rifle, but the old man was a little too far 

 from me, and by the time I had got it the ram had 

 stopped. I was in anything but a comfortable position, 

 and the ram was standing " bows on," and so covered 

 by a pine trunk to his left and a bush in front of him 

 that I could onlv see a little of the rio-ht side of his 

 chest and his head. I think I dwelt too long on my 

 aim — a sure cause of unsteadiness ; but anyhow, the 

 shot missed, and the beast went off, but not far, for 

 Anastasi signed to me that he could see him. I could 

 not, and before I could crawl up to my hunter the 



