A GOOD HEAD 281 



I took over an hour to advance 100 yards, but could 

 not venture to go further ; so I steadied my rifle 

 against a bit of rock, and waited till one of them 

 gave me a chance by getting up. I could only see 

 four or five horns against the sky, like the branches 

 of a tree, and naturally could not distinguish which 

 of them belonged to the larger Ibex. Presently, 

 however, one of them stood up broadside-on, and 

 I immediately recognised the one with the tip of his 

 horn broken off. As he did so, I drew my bead on 

 him and fired almost perpendicularly twice. I saw 

 him stumble, and had just time to give him another 

 shot which rolled him over. The others instantly 

 disappeared. On getting up to him I found he had 

 a good head, the unbroken horn measuring over 40 

 inches in length and 10^ inches girth. Taba, who 

 had been waiting some hundreds of yards off, soon 

 came up, and helped to cut the animal's head oft. 

 He was delighted at my success, and gave me further 

 samples of his broken English, although this time 

 not in his usual vocabulary, which had been hitherto 

 applied to failures. As it was getting late in the day, 

 we decided to return to camp, and the road being a 

 difficult one, it took us a long time to get out of the 

 crags, and as long again to find the horses. At 

 6 p.m. we crossed the Tarkhaty River, and reached 



