226 HUNTING CAMPS. 



distance, but from the glimpse I had of its horns I think 

 it would hardly have been worth shooting. 



As soon as we reached the river we began to hunt in 

 different directions, and on the third day Hardy killed 

 a pretty head. One afternoon, having left our men in 

 camp, Hardy and I walked to the look-out near which 

 I had shot my first stag. It was a very hot afternoon, 

 the woods filled with a summer-like stillness. We 

 were lying half asleep, and keeping a very desultory 

 watch upon the country, when along a little bare ridge 

 about half a mile away a big stag with an enormous 

 brow antler walked into view and lay quietly down on 

 the highest part of the hillock. The wind was blowing 

 straight from the stag to us, and soon our two tele- 

 scopes had taken stock of him and we were comparing 

 notes. We agreed that he was worth shooting. Between 

 us and the stag, however, the trees grew very thickly, 

 and the hummock on which he was lying was one of 

 many, so that once we had descended from the look- 

 out it would have been difficult to locate him had it 

 not been for a single gaunt pine, long dead, which 

 towered above the level of the forest about equally 

 distant from us and from him, and this, we hoped, 

 would act as a landmark. Towards it we made our 

 way, but the woodland was so dense that we soon lost 

 sight of it, and so, in addition to the caution necessary 

 to prevent the noise of our passage reaching and alarm- 

 ing the stag, we could catch sight of nothing to give us 

 our bearings, until I imagined I recognised the guiding 

 pine. But unluckily I was mistaken, and consequently 

 we came out of the timber nearly two hundred yards 

 too far to the west. 



Even then no harm need have been done, as the wind 



