SPORT AND TRAVEL 307 



and bending his head forwards, tried to pith him, as 

 I had done with many an African antelope, by stick- 

 ing my small sharp knife into the spinal column, be- 

 tween the back of the skull and the first vertebra. 



Directly, however, he felt the point of the knife 

 on his skin, he struggled to his feet and stood facing 

 me. I held him by both horns with all my strength 

 and tried to keep his head down, and for some mo- 

 ments my strength was just equal to his. But with a last 

 supreme effort the dying stag brought all the muscles 

 of his great neck into play, and, throwing up his head 

 shook my hands from his horns, causing the blade of 

 my knife, which I held in my right hand, together with 

 his left horn, to cut deep into the inside of one of my 

 fingers. Expecting a plunge forwards, which might 

 have been serious, as all the tines of a mule deer's 

 horns point forwards, I jumped to one side, but the 

 exhausted stag never moved its feet, but just sank 

 down again on its knees in the snow. I then killed it 

 with a bullet through the lungs. My first bullet had, 

 I found, struck it in the right flank, behind the ribs, 

 and after passing obliquely forwards through its body 

 had broken the left shoulder, the expanded bullet 

 remaining just under the skin. 



As I was gralloching the deer, I saw our pack train 

 passing down the valley on the farther side of the river, 

 but did not call out for one of the men to come and 

 help me, as I did not wish to cause any delay in get- 

 ting our camp pitched, for it was already late and fast 



