THE FIRST I HEX 365 



him fumbling with the focus (like all Sonialis he is (juite 

 useless with the glasses). How I wished I had my 

 Kashmiri, Satara, by my side ! No nee-d to have 

 questioned him, lor. as I fired each shot, I should have 

 heard its billet hissetl out beside me. Just then a female 

 ibe.x dashed away, and my ne.xt concern was to prevent 

 the guide tearing off to see if the beast was dead, and, if 

 so, to slash its ears and throat. By the time this little 

 niatttn- was settled, ever\- one had lost sight of the place 

 in which the ibe.\ lay, ami, try as I would, I could not 

 pick it up again, till the animal moved out on a little patch 

 of grass. It did not need a second glance to tell that he 

 was badly hit, for a great blood-stain showed on his side, 

 as he staggered forward and lay down on the edge of a 

 rock some 20 feet high. Presently he lost his balance 

 and rolled over, but with a great effort regained his feet 

 and stood for a minute, then pitched forward and fell 

 headlong down out of sight. The noise of falling stones 

 and breaking sticks was succeeded by a dull thud, and a 

 chorus of different tongues murmured the words "horns 

 broken." My memory pictured a black day in 1898 at 

 Braldo, in Baltistan, when the largest ibe.x I had ever 

 shot rolled over in a similar manner, and all we gathered 

 were a few fragments of horn and some bits of bone. 

 We set off to scramble down, and found him lying in a 

 watercourse with his horns apparently uninjured ; but a 

 thirty-foot cliff barred our near approach, and we could 

 not be certain. At last we found a way down and were 

 able to admire our prize, and indeed it was one worthy of 

 all the long journey and delays I had suffered. The upper 

 part of his thick coat looked at a little distance almost 



