- All over the mountains again this morning before daybreak,
and up to breakfast-time without seeing game.
However, one of our
sharp-sighted guides then detected markore, grazing at a long distance
up the mountains; even through the glasses they were mere specks,
and, to our unpractised eyes, very like the tufts and stones around
them; but in all faith that our guides were right, off we started in
pursuit. The first step was to lose all our morning's toil by plunging
for a mile or so down a steep descent. After that being accomplished,
up we went again, up and up an apparently interminable bank of snow, at
an angle of about sixty degrees, and slippery as glass. At the summit,
exhausted and completely out of breath, we did at last arrive, and from
this our friends of the morning were expected to be within shot. Not a
sign of a living creature appeared, however, to enliven the solitude
around us, and we began to think that our guides were a little TOO
clear-sighted this time, when what should suddenly come upon us but
a solitary old markore, slowly and leisurely rounding a rugged point
of rock below. We were all squatted in a bunch upon a space about as
large as a good-sized towel; but, hidden as we thought ourselves,
I could discern that our friend had evidently caught a glimpse of
something which displeased him in his morning cogitations. Still,
on he came, and just as he crossed a small field of snow, F. opened
fire at him across the ravine:
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