HUNTING WITH DOGS. 159 



and, as I expected, were sitting heads in air under 

 a tall tree, on one of the limbs of which I could 

 just make out in the moonlight an excrescence 

 which experience taught me must be a wild cat. 

 Rifle- shooting by moonlight is not as easy as by 

 daylight ; and though the cat came down, I don't 

 think she was hit hard ; probably not hit at all, 

 but merely dislodged by the bough beneath her 

 being broken. However, be that as it may, when 

 she did come down, she scattered the dogs right 

 and left, and got clear away into the thicket again. 

 Long after, when we were smoking the last pipe 

 rolled in our rugs, we could hear them making 

 music either over her or some luckless jackal which 

 they had come across. 



But this, our great day with the dogs, was the 

 last on which fortune smiled on us at Golovinsky. 

 From that day we got from bad to worse. No 

 more boars fell to our guns, and on wild cats and 

 fresh bear's meat even a hungry Tscherkess will 

 hardly feed. But when our supply of bear's meat 

 failed too, and nothing but a cheese rind remained, 

 we grew desperate, and having heard of a place 

 with a name fathoms long about ten miles from 

 Golovinsky, where boar abounded, and had not 

 been lately disturbed, we hired two horses from 

 the Cossacks, and with one of them for a guide 

 started to try our luck there. As usual, the guide 

 knew as little of the way as we did, so that we 



