until I thought he would throw us both off the cliff. I was
utterly dumfounded but seized his three-barrel gun to unload it for in his
excitement there was imminent danger that he would shoot either himself or
me.

Then I realized what it was all about. We had both fired simultaneously and
neither had heard the other's shot. By mistake Hotenfa had discharged a
load of buckshot and it was my bullet which had killed the goral but his
joy was so great that I would not for anything have disillusioned him.

It was a half hour's hard work to get to the place where the goral had
fallen. The dogs were already there lying quietly beside the animal when we
arrived. My bullet had entered the back just in front of the hind leg and
ranged forward through the lungs flattening itself against the breast bone;
the jacket had split, one piece tearing into the heart, so that the ram was
probably dead before it struck the rocks.

I photographed the goral where it lay and after it had been eviscerated,
and the hunters had performed their ceremonies to the God of the Hunt, I
sent one of them back with it while Hotenfa and I worked toward the bottom
of the canon in the hope of finding the other animals.

It was a delightfully warm day and Hotenfa told me in his vivid sign
language that the gorals were likely to be asleep on the sunny side of the
ravine; therefore we worked up the opposite slope.

It was the hardest kind of climbing and for two hours we plodded steadily
upward, clinging by feet and hands to bushes and rocks, and were almost
exhausted when we reached a small open patch of grass about two thirds of
the way to the summit.

We rested for half an hour and, after a light tiffin, toiled on again. I
had not gone thirty feet, and Hotenfa was still sitting down, when I saw
him wave his arm excitedly and throw up his gun to shoot. I leaped down to
his side just as he fired at a big female goral which was sound asleep in
an open patch of grass on the mountain-side.

Hotenfa's bullet broke the animal's foreleg at the knee but without the
slightest sign of injury she dashed down the cliff. I fired as she ran,
striking her squarely in the heart, and she pitched headlong into the
bushes a hundred feet below.

How Hotenfa managed to pack that animal to the summit of the ridge I never
can understand, for with a light sack upon my back and a rifle it was all I
could do to pull myself up the rocks. He was completely done when we
finally