130 Tin-: OLI> BUCK OF KODAKARNAL, 
make signs to me to come quick. Come quick, indeed, over 
such ground 1 Picking my way carefully 1 got up to him at 
last, he pointed, and there was the ibex lying on a rock 
below me. I planted a ball just behind the shoulder and 
he fell over on his side, but in the death struggles he rolled 
off the rock, and in another minute would have tumbled 
over the precipice into the jungles far below, had nof the 
horns caught fast in the bough of a rhododendron bush. 
The hind legs were within a yard of the precipice, and a 
tremendous one it was, if I may judge from the sound of the 
fall when we tumbled the body ov^er after securing the head. 
It was indeed a close shave of losing him. We had a rough 
scramble to get down to him, but a worse one to get back. 
I was quite in a tremble for fear that Francis would be pulled 
over by the weight of the ibex when he unhooked him 
from the bush. He was a fine old saddle back with good 
horns. 
There was a well- known old saddle back which fre- 
quented the rocks about Kodakarnalr whose head and horns 
it was my ambition to add to my trophies. I had many a 
stalk after him, but he always managed to give me the slip. 
One evening when busy drawing, the boy who 1 had 
stationed at the look-out, came running in to say that the 
saddle back was in sight. I started off at once, and when I 
got to the station, on putting up the glasses, there, sure 
enough, was my old friend. He was busy at his evening 
meal, kfieping a sharp look-out, and close to the edge of a 
precipice, which, with an occasional break of slope and rock, 
went clean down to the low country. 
The difficulty was to get down to him without being 
seen ; fortunately the wind was all right, and the mist, which 
