He Was, However, In Such Thick Cover,
That We Were Unable To Get A Shot At Him.
Our camp, we found, moved, according to order, some three miles higher
up, to facilitate the shooting on that side:
It was still, however,
among the firs and nightingales.
JUNE 23. - Up again before sunrise, and off to the tops of the
mountains in search of game. The pull-up took us about an hour and a
half, and on reaching the summit, we found ourselves above the pass
of the Peer Punjal, the rocky and snow-covered ranges of mountain
around us gradually trending off on all sides, and losing themselves in
pine-covered slopes, till they finally blended with the blue outlines
of the ranges of Pills we had crossed on our route from Bimber. While
taking a sharp look around us for a herd of some twenty animals which
we had seen the day previously, we suddenly found ourselves close
to a party of five markore, but they scampered off so fast over rock
and snowdrift, that they gave us no opportunity of getting a shot.
Following them up, we came, while clinging to an overhanging ledge of
rock, upon one solitary gentleman standing about 150 yards below. We
both fired together, but the pace we had come, and the ground we had
crossed, had unsteadied our aim, and though my second bullet parted
the wool on his back, it was not written that our first markore
was to fall so easily. After this we tracked the first herd for
a long distance over the snow, until they scampered down an almost
perpendicular face of snow and ice, and here we gave them up, halting
on a spur of the mountain for a repast of chicken, eggs, chupatties,
and cold tea. During our morning's work we had come across some
most break-neck places, and had one or two narrow escapes, which,
at the time, one was hardly conscious of. The snow was wedged into
the ravines like sheets of ice, and being most precipitous, and
continuing to the very foot of the mountains, terminating in the
numerous torrents which they fed, a single false step in crossing
would have sent one rolling down, without a chance of stopping, to be
dashed to pieces at the bottom. In this way, a couple of years before,
two coolies and a shikaree had been killed, while shooting with an
officer. F. and I generally crossed these places in the footsteps
of the guides, or in holes cut by them for our feet with a hatchet;
but the men themselves passed them with a dash, which only long
practice and complete confidence could have imitated. During our halt
we suffered a good deal from the sun, although the snow was only six
inches off. In spite of the shade which our guides constructed for
us out of mysterious portions of their dress, both our wrists and
ankles were completely swollen and blistered before evening, while
our faces and noses in particular began to assume the appearance so
generally suggestive of Port wine and good living.
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