162 MY SPORTING HOLIDAYS 



the camp whisky differed radically from our own. 

 His summary dismissal entailed a seventeen-mile walk 

 back to the nearest ranch on foot. The dismissal 

 was nothing. But the enforced walk made him our 

 enemy for life. 



We hunted somewhat casually in those days, as I 

 have already intimated, and we trusted largely to 

 luck and ' straight ' powder when the opportunity 

 came. What hunter is there among the sons of men 

 who does not believe in luck, who does not pay 

 homage in numerous small ways to the Goddess of 

 Chance ? So many little events or accidents may 

 happen, over which mere human foresight or fore- 

 thought can have no control ; so many chances of 

 route or wind or weather may occur that will decide 

 or influence success or failure, as the case may be, 

 that to some extent the hunter is bound to be super- 

 stitious. 



One of Louis Stevenson's heroes, I think it was, 

 once left it to the spin of a coin to decide a fateful 

 choice of route in an unknown land a spin that in 

 his case meant all the difference between life and 

 death ; and this he expressly did ' to show his 

 scorn of human reason.' Most sportsmen will sym- 

 pathize with the feeling that prompted so bold a 

 challenge to chance or fate. The big-game hunter 

 who works the hardest, who has the greatest know- 

 ledge of the range and habits of the game he is after, 

 and, above all, who shoots the straightest when the 

 opportunity comes, will no doubt in the long-run 

 achieve the best results. But, nevertheless, the ' race 

 is not always to the swift,' nor c the battle to the 

 strong.' Is it a deity or a demon, I wonder, who 

 appears so constantly to interfere, either in humour or 



