226 AN UNSUCCESSFUL STALK 



its effect upon wild creatures, it must indeed be an 

 appalling stench. One can detect the shudder which 

 precedes their instant flight. Our deer were off in the 

 twinkling of an eye, but they did not cross the hill. 

 They pulled up on the shoulder about a mile and a half 

 from us, and the stalker decreed that we must cross the 

 top, and come back upon them from the other side. How 

 simple it all sounds, but what a variety of suffering it 

 entailed upon one who will never see his half hundred 

 again, and who, it must be assumed, had come out only 

 to take his pleasure. First, there was the steep ascent, 

 still under burning sunshine, and among devouring 

 midges ; then, on the summit was dark mist, driving rain, 

 and searching blast. Next came the crawl, when cold 

 water from without mingled with perspiration from with- 

 in, till not a dry thread remained. Afterwards there was 

 half an hour of lying flat in the wet till the deer should 

 feed into sight ; and finally, the supreme moment, when 

 teeth must be restrained from chattering, numb limbs 

 wakened into sudden action, and a bead, as steady as may 

 be, drawn upon the dark carcase of the switch-horn, full 

 in view at not more than eighty yards. 



'Over him!' was all the stalker's comment after the shot; 

 i ut no wealth of vocabulary could have lent poignancy to 

 the reproach. And here am I, having munched a bundle 

 of sandwiches, flabby with rain, speculating what greater 

 folly I could have committed than to expose myself to 

 such exceeding discomfort, in order to shed the blood of 

 a creature which never did me an injury, and would not 

 be my property if I slew it. How justly he might grumble 

 who should be paid to do this kind of thing. 



The deer having fled, the vast area of this mountain 



