64 TRACKING. 



taking a hasty aim, let drive, and in my hurry, with sorrow 

 be it told, clean missed the great animal ; but, being very 

 sick, he soon pulled up in a small strip of wood that ex- 

 tended for a short distance down the hill. 



I now took Jeetoo's advice, contrary to my own opinion, 

 with respect to taking up a position whilst he proceeded to 

 drive out the wounded deer. My idea was to post myself at 

 the lower end of the bit of wood, thinking that, as the stag 

 was badly wounded, he would most probably take down hill. 

 But Jeetoo persisted that he would take upwards, so I gave 

 in to his superior knowledge of woodcraft, in which he was 

 seldom at fault; consequently I had the mortification of 

 seeing the stag leave the cover almost at the spot I had 

 intended posting myself. He made straight for the thick 

 forest below, in which he disappeared from our sight. We 

 followed at once on his tracks, feeling quite confident that, 

 as he was so hard hit, we should soon overtake him. We 

 came up with him several times, and got so close as to hear 

 him crashing away through the bushes, but, owing to the 

 dense cover, without getting even a glimpse of him. Here 

 we had made another mistake, in following him up too soon 

 instead of allowing him time enough to lie down, when in 

 all probability he would have given an easy chance for a shot. 



For the greater part of three days did we slowly and per- 

 severingly follow him, often finding clots of gore where he 

 had stopped to rest. Jeetoo's tracking powers were truly 

 astonishing. Sometimes, after losing all traces of the slot for 

 hours, where it had led over rocky ground, my sinking hopes 

 would be revived by his drawing my attention to an almost 

 invisible speck of dry blood on a twig or a blade of long grass 

 against which the animal had brushed in passing. The stag, 

 however, baffled all his skill, and we were at length most 

 reluctantly obliged to abandon the pursuit, where the tracks 

 were irretrievably lost among a number of those of other deer, 

 with which they had got confused. 



