A SHOCKING MISS. 167 



round the rocky shoulder of the ridge, when I caught sight 

 of the animal a short distance below me ; but having got 

 wind of us in some manner, it rattled away down the rocks, 

 and before I could cover it with the rifle, was out of sight 

 in a deep wooded " khud " l immediately beneath. 



As I stood on a projecting crag, disappointedly gazing 

 down in the direction the surrow had gone, the head and 

 shoulders of another suddenly emerged from behind a rock 

 not twenty yards below me. I was considerably out of 

 breath from climbing, and the space I had almost to balance 

 myself on was so limited and so directly over the animal, 

 that I missed it, or at any rate made a shockingly bad shot. 

 It must, however, have touched the beast somewhere, for I 

 was close enough to hear it give a low kind of grunt, as it 

 dashed off, like a rocket, downwards after its companion. 

 We followed a short way on its bloodless trail, and then, feel- 

 ing much mortified at my muffish performance, made straight 

 for our new camp, which had been pitched on the ridge 

 running along the opposite side of the wide khud, in the 

 dark silent depths of which the surrow had taken refuge. 

 After a late breakfast, as I sat deliberating as to whether 

 it would be worth while turning out all our men to search 

 the gorge below, on the faint chance of finding the surrow 

 lying wounded there, one of them came running to tell me 

 he had seen a surrow moving among the rocks and bushes 

 far down on the opposite face of the khud. On taking a 

 look through the glass there, I saw the beast, and, strange 

 to say, not very far from where our two friends of the morning 

 had been lost sight of. "We watched it until it moved 

 behind some bushes, and as it did not reappear, we con- 

 cluded it must have lain down there ; so I at once arranged 

 for attempting a drive, the ground being rather unfavour- 

 able for a stalk. Sending some men round behind the 



1 " Khml," or "khalla," is the native term for a steep-sided, V-shaped 

 gorge, as " pakhan " is for a precipice, " khanta " for crags, and " pahar" or 

 " teeba" for a mountain or hill. 



