94 NARROW ESCAPE. 



frightfully dangerous by being very wet and slippery from 

 the rain which was still falling. We had missed the track of 

 the gooral, and I was carefully going along the brink of a 

 craggy precipice, to which I thought the wounded animal 

 might have betaken himself, with my gun ready to finish 

 him with a buckshot cartridge, should I catch sight of him 

 among the rocky ledges below. Kurbeer was some distance 

 higher up, on a very steep incline of short grass rising im- 

 mediately above me, searching for the lost track. Suddenly 

 I heard a scuffling sound above. Looking upwards, to my 

 horror I saw that the lad had lost his footing on the slippery 

 wet earth, and was rolling and sliding down the slope, clutch- 

 ing frantically at the short grass with his free hand, for, not- 

 withstanding his danger, he still kept hold of my rifle he was 

 carrying with the other. At once I saw that his only chance 

 lay in my being able to arrest his progress before he reached 

 the brink of the precipice. I had scarce time to deposit the 

 gun safely on the steep ground, in order to have both hands 

 free, ere he was down within a few yards of me. For- 

 tunately I happened to be almost directly below him, so I 

 set my teeth, dug my feet as firmly as possible into the wet 

 earth, and, holding my breath, stood ready to try and stop 

 him, for I knew his life depended on my being able to do so. 

 Another roll and he would have been over. Making a des- 

 perate clutch at him, I luckily got firm hold of his loose 

 clothes, thereby checking his descent sufficiently to enable 

 him to recover his footing, otherwise his weight and impetus 

 must have taken us down together. All this, of course, hap- 

 pened in very much less time than I have taken to tell it ; 

 and my mingled feelings of horror and thankfulness at this 

 narrow escape were such as to be not easily forgotten. 



We now called a short halt to recover the tone of our 

 nerves, which had naturally been rather shaken by what 

 had occurred. But as any one who hunts properly over 

 such mountains as these is often more or less exposed to 



