286 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 
rush on, you know not whither. My game on this day proved 
to be much more long-winded and powerful than usual, and I 
had, as the consequence, a tremendous race of it before I 
began to gain very rapidly upon its flight. At length the 
buck began to make leaps a little less long and high, and my 
horse, by this time thoroughly heated in the run, to snort 
with eagerness as he let out an additional link or two of 
speed. I closed rapidly with the quarry, and loosened my 
holsters for the shot which was to close the scene. Now my 
horse, with ears laid back, closes up alongside, and with 
trembling haste the pistol is snatched from the holster. With 
all its desperate speed we almost touch the hair with the 
muzzle before we fire—between the shoulders—and it is down! 
—tumbling, in the impulse of its flight, forward with broken 
neck bent beneath the body. 
It is over! We are silent and still. The bloody work is 
finished, and I look around for the first time to see where I 
am, or what is in sight. I am amongst a wild Archipelago 
of islands, or ‘“ motts” of timber, with long, irregular vistas 
stretching between them in all directions. My victim lies at 
my feet quiet enough now. The strong breeze cools my 
heated forehead. The hush is profound at first, for every 
voice of nature has been frightened into silence by the violent 
scene which had just occurred to desecrate a peaceful home; 
but gradually, before my confused sense has time to realize 
the scene, the rap, rap, rapping of a wood-pecker’s hammer 
stole timidly out from the nearest “mott,” and then sound 
after sound, resumed in the same low key, hesitated forth 
from bird and insect, showing that Nature was yet alive, 
although just now so appalled. 
I gazed around—with something of the dim confused per- 
ception of one awakening from the deep sleep of troubled dream 
—into the lengthening vistas stretching by uncertain glimpses | 
into remotest distance—when gradually the overwhelming rea- 
lization of the vastness came upon me, and then the shudder- 
