However, I did my best at the risk of falling in
myself.
I took off my handkerchief and made a slip-knot, and begging
Pelly to lie down on the top of the rock, I took his hand while I
clung to the face of the wall as I best could by a little ledge
of about two inches' width.
With great difficulty I succeeded in hooking the bitch's head in
the slip-knot, but in my awkward position I could not use
sufficient strength to draw her out. I could only support her
head above the water, which I could distinctly feel was drawing
her from me. Presently she gave a convulsive struggle, which
freed her head from the loop, and in an instant she disappeared.
I could not help going round the rock to see if her body should
be washed out when the torrent reappeared, when, to my
astonishment, up she popped all right, not being more than half
drowned by her subterranean excursion, and we soon helped her
safe ashore. Fortunately for her, the passage had been
sufficiently large to pass her, although I have no doubt a man
would have been held fast and drowned.
There was so much water in the river that I determined to move
from this locality as too dangerous for hunting. I therefore
ordered the village people to assemble on the following morning
to carry the loads and tent. In the mean time I sent for the
dead elk.
There could riot be a better place for a hunting-box than that
cave. We soon had a glorious fire roaring round the kennel-pot,
which, having been well scoured with sand and water, was to make
the soup. Such soup! - shades of gourmands, if ye only smelt
that cookery! The pot held six gallons, and the whole elk, except
a few steaks, was cut up and alternately boiled down in sections.
The flesh was then cut up small for the pack, the marrowbones
reserved for "master," and the soup was then boiled until it had
evaporated to the quantity required. A few green chilies, onions
in slices fried, and a little lime-juice, salt, black pepper and
mushroom ketchup, and - in fact, there is no rise thinking of it,
as the soup is not to be had again. The fire crackled and blazed
as the logs were heaped upon it as night grew near, and lit up
all the nooks and corners of the old cave. Three beds in a row
contained three sleepy mortals. The hounds snored and growled,
and then snored again.
