IN THE LAND OF THE BORA. 305 



I descended to the scene of the firing, and 

 there learnt that the gendarme, who was armed 

 with his service repeating carbine as well as with 

 a double-barrelled gun, had fired all these shots 

 at a buck " to drive it to his Excellency." How 

 he expected to do so was not clear ; but, anvway, 



we had no doubt that Captain F , the g 1 to 



my left, had improved the opportunity, a las 

 when he came down it was with a beater carry- 

 ing the luckless kid. He said he had only seen 

 it moving in the beech bushes ; in which case, 

 for all he knew, it might have been me. I am 

 inclined to fear it was blood-thirstiness ; but, any- 

 way, the killing of kids is illegal, and in this case 

 was well punished, for the old buck, who had 

 been going straight towards him, was never seen 

 again by anybody, and I have no doubt he, on 

 hearing the shot to his front, lay low in the beech 

 scrub till all was quiet. From the position in 

 which he was found, I have no doubt this was 

 the beast who scored off me so the day I mislaid 

 my spectacles, and whom I twice had long shots 

 at, but in vain. So ended the beat, in which 

 some half-dozen more chamois had been seen 

 (but out of shot) by the highest guns. About half 

 an hour took us back to my standing camp, where 

 three or four of the little tentes cVabvi carried 

 by the Austrian soldiery had been erected, by 

 the side of which my thirteen-feet Piggott looked 



x 



