236 AMONG THE IBEX OF TURKESTAN. 



were springing up in all directions, disappearing and 

 reappearing among the crags and boulders through 

 which they picked their way. The beast I fired at 

 sprang high in the air and then vanished, as though 

 the earth had opened and swallowed him up. A hoarse 

 " Shot ! " from Nurah (this was his one word of Eng- 

 lish) set me wondering whether he wished to convey 

 the idea that I had shot the beast or that I should 

 shoot again. Taking it for the latter, to be on the 

 safe side, I drew a bead on another beast, which ap- 

 peared bewildered and undecided which way to go, and 

 pressed the trigger. " Shot ! " again came from close 

 behind me, and this time there was no doubt what was 

 intended, for I saw the beast fall dead myself. 



Certainly one head, perhaps two, — not so bad for one 

 morning, I thought. But things were not quite so 

 bright as they had seemed, for when we reached the 

 fallen beast which I had brought down with my second 

 shot, we found that he had a horn of little more than 

 40 inches, and number one was nowhere to be found. 

 I went up to the spot where he had been standing, and 

 found myself on the very brink of a yawning chasm, 

 which gave seemingly into the bowels of the earth, 

 whence there issued a rumbling of subterranean waters. 

 Climbing a short way down the side, I peered into the 

 abyss below, and after becoming accustomed to the 

 darkness, made out with the aid of my glasses a pair oi 

 horns, wedged evidently between two rocks in the very 

 middle of an angry torrent, whose waters roared and 

 hissed, and threw up great jets of foam as they raced 

 through a tunnel to the open mountain-side beyond. 



The horns had all the appearance of being very large 

 ones ; but their size remained a matter of conjecture — 

 for the time being — for not even a Kalmuk would 

 trust himself unaided into the swirling cauldron far 



