1 A JOURNEY IN THE EAST: 361 



lemonade from the alpine haversack which he carried on 

 his back. 



After half an hour's rest Salim urged us to try a fresh 

 place, but the Grand Duke, Hoyos, Eschenbacher, and Rath 

 decided to shoot their way back to the camp. Chorinsky and 

 I, however, were still keen to go on, and followed the 

 Bedouins out into the steppe, where after a long tramp we 

 got to some little bushes succeeded by marshy ground and a 

 circular patch of reeds only a few hundred yards in circum- 

 ference. Salim posted the guns on one side, the beaters on 

 the other, in such a way that any game which was lying in 

 this cover must come to shot as soon as it broke. 



Achmed is a fine fellow, but has no liking for encounters 

 with dangerous animals-, and as soon as he realized the situa- 

 tion he begged me to allow him to sit down behind a bush 

 some distance off, and hastily disappeared without waiting for 

 an answer. 



I placed myself near a well-beaten run of the wild boars, 

 and hardly had the dogs entered the reeds when they began 

 to hunt furiously. . Hunting and baying went on alternately, 

 the infernal yells of the beaters mingling with the barks of 

 the dogs, till at last, after a long quarter of an hour of excite- 

 ment, a large sow broke from the thicket and rushed at full 

 speed along the run near which I was standing. 



Shot through and through with a ball below the back, it 

 rolled over at once, but picked itself up again and went 

 on grunting with rage. The worthy Achmed, not recognizing 

 the signs of an animal's run, had lain down directly across 

 this identical track, and so it chanced that the wounded beast 

 came tearing down and attacked the wretched man with blind 

 fury. Luckily I had followed it as hard as I could run, and 

 found Achmed shrieking and brandishing his knife while 

 standing on one leg and stretching out the other to keep the 

 angry brute at bay. The sow was just making a furious 



