166 A Sportsman at Large 



He invited me to visit him at Moscow, promising me un- 

 limited sport, to which would be added that spice of danger 

 which is said to lend enchantment to the chase. He was 

 intensely interested in various explosives and bullets which 

 he had devised for the prompt and effectual subjection of 

 Bruin. 



I had thoughts of taking advantage of his generous offer 

 of hospitality, but I have had, all my life, a hatred of snow, 

 under any and every circumstance ; so I never found my way 

 to the vast domains of " The Little Father." 



But sometime later Prince Scherinski sent me a book he had 

 written on the laika (barking) dogs of Russia ; for, like myseli , 

 he was an enthusiastic cynophilist. This monograph was 

 exhaustively dealt with and profusely illustrated. A few 

 years after the Great War, I met the Princess Bariatinski 

 (aunt of my friend " Mickie," who, I was grieved to hear, 

 had passed away some time since) . 



On inquiring about Prince Scherinski, the Princess informed 

 me that since the revolution she had lost sight of him, and 

 feared that he had fallen a victim to the Red Terror, she 

 herself having escaped the same fate by miraculous good 

 fortune only. 



Here I may as well set forth the sport of wolf-coursing 

 as described to me by my lost friend. 



The wolves are kept in a huge enclosure, some miles in cir- 

 cumference, and are driven out, one by one, on to a vast 

 and bare plain. 



It seems that three borzois are slipped at the fugitive. 



The wolf is possessed of extraordinary speed, but the 

 borzoi is even faster. (A good borzoi can lead a first-class 

 greyhound to a hare many lengths, but almost invariably 

 swings out yards at the turn, and is quite unable to run the 

 quarry c'osely, or to score any telling points in the eyes of an 

 efficient judge of coursing.) Now when the borzois reach the 

 wolf, instead of going straight for him, they act in concert. 



Two of them range up, one on each side of the unfortunate 

 lupus, and keep barging into him alternately, until they have 

 him sprawling and quite unbalanced. Presently he loses his 

 foothold, and then borzoi number three, who has been follow- 



