THE CAUCASUS 33 



night I waited for my gillie to come back from his vigil by the 

 Kuban, and at dawn he came, four men carrying him. He 

 had wounded the old grey beast on a narrow path through the 

 kamish, and had lain still while the boar gnashed his teeth and 

 glared about for his foe. But the tall reeds hid the hunter, 

 and the boar turning retraced his steps, leaving a broad blood 

 trail as he went. Until the grey dawn the Tcherkess waited, 

 and then, confident that he would find his enemy cold and stiff 

 not far away, he got up and followed the tracks. Before he 





The boar's charge 



had gone far, there was a crash among the reeds behind him, 

 followed by a fierce rush along the trail, and as he turned to 

 face his foe, the keen white tusks ripped him from knee to thigh- 

 joint and across and across his stomach, until his bowels rushed 

 out and he lay across the pathway nearer death than the boar. 

 When his companions found him he had still life enough 

 left to tell the story, and an examination of the scene of the 

 encounter proved the extraordinary cunning of the wounded 

 boar, who, failing to ' locate ' his enemy when first struck, had 

 retraced his own steps along the trail, had entered the reeds at 



II. D 



