84 A TREMENDOUS DROP. 



me in our down-hill stalk, they contrive to cleverly " field " 

 the stones set in motion by my heavy nailed boots, and 

 sometimes place a hand or a shoulder against a smooth 

 rock, or drive the point of an alpenstock into the ground 

 for a footstep below me, until at last we manage to get 

 within easy range. The shot is a downward one ; so aim- 

 ing low, I let the best-looking buck have it. Off they all 

 start, but the one shot at soon separates from the herd, and 

 makes for the brink of a declivity just below. As he nears 

 it he stumbles and totters, struggles to the edge, and toppling 

 over it, disappears from our sight. Meantime the rest have 

 stopped to look back, giving me a chance at another fellow 

 with the second barrel, ere they take their final departure. 



On our reaching the spot where the tahr had gone over, 

 we find beyond a sheer drop of fully a thousand feet. As 

 we crane our necks forward to look down, we can see what 

 we suppose is the dead animal lying among a confused mass 

 of broken rock and boulders beside the torrent at the narrow 

 bottom of the valley, but from the colour being so similar 

 to that of its surroundings, the aid of the telescope is 

 necessary to make certain. There lies our tahr, but how to 

 fetch him is now the question. As reaching him is im- 

 possible, unless by making a long round which would 

 occupy many hours, we finally decide on leaving him for 

 the present where he is, and straightway proceed to follow 

 up the other buck I had shot at, and soon find plenty of 

 blood on his track. 



In the excitement of our stalk we had failed to notice 

 that a scudding rack was fast overspreading the cloudless 

 sky of the early morning. A heavy veil of mist, too, was 

 now trailing itself up the valley, and rain soon began to fall. 

 The traces of the wounded tahr were rapidly becoming 

 obliterated by the fast-falling drops ; and as the track lay 

 over very bad ground, our experience of the day before 

 made us rather chary of following farther in the wet, so we 

 gave up the pursuit. The mist also had become so dense 



