HIS LAST LEAP. 265 
and half his neck, but I aimed through the grass at his 
chest, he turned back and was out of sight in an instant, but 
the thud of the bullet was loud and unmistakable. I ran up 
the slope but no stag was visible ; the ground below appeared 
too precipitous for him to have gone straight back. At last 
after a long search we discovered his track with quantities of 
filS LAST LEAP, 
blood. We followed tt up and found he had gone at speed 
over a perpendicular rock with a sheer drop of at least fifty 
feet, but from the hill being so steep the distance he had 
gone through the air before reaching the ground was a great 
deal more ; we found him some hundred yards further down 
firmly jammed in the middle of a small clump of bushes. I 
fully expected that his antlers would have been smashed to 
pieces, but they fortunately were quite uninjured, and very 
fine ones they were with a grand spread of thirty-eight 
inches and the same in length ; the beams very massive. 
ilAFFLES LrBPAlRY 
