BULLET AND SHOT 



from their usual haunts near the top of a high 

 grass hill in sambur ground, to which I was, one 

 afternoon, wending my way in hopes of seeing a 

 stag, and of enjoying an evening stalk, in the 

 innocent belief that D. was working the ibex-cliffs 

 a good distance off. He had been so doing, but 

 having left them, went across to the same sambur 

 ground, and there saw the ibex as above stated. 

 When I reached the ridge overlooking the valley, 

 in which, later in the evening, I hoped to see 

 sambur emerge from the forest, I spied D. and 

 his men proceeding towards a commanding hill 

 across the valley in front of me. What they were 

 doing, and where they were going to, I had no 

 means of knowing, and it was not until we met 

 in camp in the evening that the horrible truth in 

 all its nakedness was exposed. D., having in vain 

 tried the ibex ground, had proceeded to the valley 

 wherein I saw him, to look for sambur ; and while 

 on this quest he spied a herd of ibex on the high 

 grass hill across the valley, and amongst them was 

 a patriarchal " saddle -back." D., who had never 

 seen ibex before, described the saddle -mark, as 

 viewed through his glasses, as a yellow patch upon 

 the black ground of the rest of the animal. It then 

 happened that while D. was laboriously stalking 

 down the hill -face opposite to the ibex, they 

 suddenly dashed off and disappeared from view 

 over the brow. He was at first at a loss to 

 understand the reason for this move upon their 

 part, but soon discovered it in the shape of myself 

 and my men on the sky-line of the opposite hill 



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