52 AT CLOSE QUARTERS WITH BRUIN. 



side for gooral, when one of my companions suddenly crouched 

 down, and, pointing with his finger, in an excited whisper 

 ejaculated the word baloo! On looking in the direction indi- 

 cated, there, sure enough, was a big black bear clambering 

 about among the rocks and grass about a quarter of a mile off. 

 He had evidently come out of the forest on the north side, 

 and as he was not far below the crest of the ridge we were on, 

 if he remained there only for a short time, I saw he could be 

 easily stalked for a near shot. We therefore retired quietly 

 into the wood, and made our way round through it as fast as 

 the broken nature of the ground would allow of. After some 

 rough scrambling and climbing, we reached the spot we had 

 marked on the ridge, where we judged we should find our 

 friend Bruin pretty close below us. I had crawled on to a 

 ledge of rock to look over, when I almost met the brute as he 

 was scrambling up the rocks en route for the wood, fortunately 

 without his seeming to observe me. I tried to cock the rifle, 

 but the hammers refused to move. Kurbeer and Baloo Mai- 

 were endeavouring to make themselves as small as possible 

 behind me, and the brave slayer of bears, seeming neither to 

 like such close proximity to Bruin nor to understand my 

 delay in firing, kept urging me, in a trembling stage-whisper, 

 to shoot. Meanwhile the bear had reached the crest, and 

 was moving along within a few paces, just below us, beside 

 the ledge of rock we were on, and still, strange to say, with- 

 out detecting us, or the consequences might have been un- 

 pleasant; for we were now between him and the precipice, 

 and a tussle with Bruin under existing circumstances would 

 have been decidedly in his favour. At this juncture it sud- 

 denly struck me that in my flurry I had forgotten to re- 

 move those worse than useless old appendages, the so-called 

 " safety "-bolts, from the hammers. I had only just time to 

 withdraw them, and to give the brute a slanting shot behind 

 the shoulder, before he disappeared, with a grunt, down among 

 the trees on the back slope of the hill. " Ne lugga " (not hit), 



