140 HUNTING CAMPS. 



might have knocked me over. Meantime I was still strug- 

 gling with the refractory cartridge, and when at last I suc- 

 ceeded in getting it out and another in the stag was going 

 away end-on at about fifty yards, when I fired at the back 

 of his neck and missed. After galloping another hundred 

 and fifty yards he stood and gave me a chance of a beautiful 

 broadside shot, which passed over his back, and he went 

 off unhurt. 



I was naturally chagrined and furious with myself for 

 missing such an easy opportunity and still more for my 

 idiotic performance in allowing myself to change from one 

 stag to the other at the last moment, even though I had 

 not seen the second stag until he broke out almost on 

 top of me, for a bush had screened him entirely. Yet all 

 the time, Wells told me, this animal had really been nearer 

 to me than any of the others. We followed him in rather 

 an unhopeful frame of mind for about half an hour and then 

 returned to look for the first I had fired at. We found him 

 lying by the edge of a little pond. His head was a very 

 fairly good one, though, I think, a little inferior to that of 

 his companion. 



Early next day I climbed a hill to look for the smoke of 

 Wynyard's camp fire, as I imagined it more than likely that 

 by this time he would have moved from the spot at which I 

 had parted from him. This turned out to be the case, for I 

 quickly perceived the smoke rising some ten miles away 

 to the north-east. As far as I could judge he was camped 

 in the woods by Foxy Lead. I determined to rejoin him, 

 hunting on my way, as by striking to the south-east I could 

 still pass through some country that we had not visited. 

 Late in the afternoon, just as we were on the point of turn- 

 ing back, Jack Wells spied a large stag that was feeding, 

 escorted by fifteen does. Still sore from my experience of 

 the previous day, I stalked him carefully to within a distance 

 of something under a hundred yards, when I shot him 



