208 A SPRING AND SUMMER IN LAPLAND. 



maddened with pain and rage, in a headlong, 

 desperate charge. I never should have believed 

 that he could come at such a pace. I took as 

 steady an aim as the circumstances and hurry- 

 allowed, and fired point-blank at his chest. It 

 •was a snap-shot, and I missed him clean. I had 

 but a moment to struggle backwards into the 

 bushes (for the underwood was very thick) when 

 he was close on me, and in a few seconds would 

 have reached me. My second shot, however, told, 

 and he fell within a foot of me. I could just in- 

 distinctly see a huge dark mass roll over at my 

 feet with a thundering crash ; but, such was the 

 excitement of the moment, that I saw nothing 

 more. It was clear that I had had, indeed, a very 

 narrow escape. But even now he was not quite 

 dead, and there was something awful to witness 

 in his death-struggles. I soon, however, " picked 

 myself together,' 5 and, quickly loading, put a 

 bullet through his ear, thus ending his agony and 

 his life. I was not the only one who had a nar- 

 rowish escape on this occasion, for the next man 

 to me, as soon as he missed and turned the elk, 

 instead of standing at his post, ran on after him, 

 shouting all the while to me to look out. The 

 consequence was, he was right in the line of my 

 fire, and my first ball, which missed the elk, 

 glanced off a rock (as we could see afterwards), 



