132 SPORT IN THE HIGHLANDS OF KASHMIR chap. 



face, at a canter in some places. It was wonderful to 

 see them. 



When all had disappeared but the two wounded ones, 

 we went down the side of our ridge till on the same 

 level as the patriarch, and examined him through the 

 glasses. He was then lying in the niche he had been 

 trying to get up when hit. If he remained where he was 

 it seemed impossible for us to get him, for no man could 

 have climbed to where he lay. The smaller ibex was 

 moving about trying to get either up or down, but the 

 ground was too much for an animal with three legs, and 

 he could do neither. Presently he found a nook to lie 

 down in, and though I fired a few shots in hopes of dis- 

 lodging him, I failed to do so. 



Abdulla looked with respect at the little .303 he had 

 hitherto despised, and said he had never seen a rifle do 

 such shooting before. Both men admitted that they 

 thought I was only going to waste cartridges, when I 

 opened fire at such a range. The ibex too evidently 

 had considered themselves perfectly safe, for many of 

 them, including the old leader, were looking straight at 

 me when I fired the first shot. 



Meantime the patriarch was evidently in a bad way, 

 for I saw him two or three times trying to steady himself 

 But he was apparently unable to do so on the narrow 

 platform he occupied, and presently we saw him slip off 

 it, and sliding down the slope below, go off its edge 

 through the air for some two or three hundred feet 

 or so, strike another slope, down which he went with 

 gathering speed, and then, after a succession of big 

 bounds, land finally in a mass of snow at the bottom. It 



