A TREMENDOUS DROP. 97 



best-looking buck have it. Off they all start, but the one shot 

 at soon separates from the herd, and makes for the brink of a 

 declivity just below. As he nears it he stumbles and totters, 

 struggles to the edge, and toppling over it, disappears from 

 our sight. Meantime the rest have stopped to look back, 

 giving me a chance at another fellow with the second barrel, 

 ere they take their final departure. 



On our reaching the spot where the tahr had gone over, we 

 find beyond a sheer drop of fully a thousand feet. As we 

 crane our necks forward to look down, we can see what we 

 suppose is the dead animal lying among a confused mass of 

 broken rock and boulders beside the torrent at the narrow 

 bottom of the valley, but from the colour being so similar to 

 that of its surroundings, the aid of the telescope is necessary 

 to make certain. There lies our tahr, but how to fetch him 

 is now the question. As reaching him is impossible, unless 

 by making a long round which would occupy many hours, 

 we finally decide on leaving him for the present where he is, 

 and straightway proceed to follow up the other buck I had 

 shot at, and soon find plenty of blood on his track. 



In the excitement of our stalk we had failed to notice that 

 a scudding rack was fast overspreading the cloudless sky of 

 the early morning. A heavy veil of mist, too, was now trail- 

 ing itself up the valley, and rain soon began to fall. The 

 traces of the wounded tahr were rapidly becoming obliterated 

 by the fast-falling drops, and as the track lay over very bad 

 ground, our experience of the day before made us rather chary 

 of following farther in the wet, so we gave up the pursuit. 

 The mist also had become so dense that we could hardly see 

 a dozen yards around us, making it difficult even for our 

 guide to find his way back to the cave, towards which we 

 now turned our steps. 



On the morrow the early morning again broke bright and 

 clear, so our shikaree proposed that we should bivouac, for 

 the night, higher up on the hill, where, after pointing out the 



G 



