Early next morning we proceeded to erect snow-screens at favourable passes, wherein to await the wild-goats as they moved up or down the mountain-side at dawn and dusk respectively, their favourite food being the rye-grass which the peasants from the villages below contrive to grow in tiny patches—two or three square yards scattered here and there amidst the crags. It is only by rare industry that even so paltry a crop can be snatched at such altitudes, and during the short period when the snow is absent from the southern aspects. At present it enveloped everything—not a blade of vegetation, nor a mouthful for a wild-goat could be seen.
Although in going to our puestos during the day the snow was generally soft—the sun being very hot—yet in returning after dark we found the way most dangerous, traversing a sloping, slippery ice-surface like a huge glacier, where a slip or false step would send one down half a mile with nothing to clutch at or to save oneself. Such a slide meant death, for it could only terminate in an awful precipice or in one of those horrible holes with a raging torrent to receive one in its dark abyss, and convey the fragments beneath the snow—where to appear next? Each step had to be cut with a hatchet, or hollowed—the butt of a rifle is not intended for such work, but has had to perform it.
Every day here we saw goats on or about the snow-fields and towering rocks above our cave. They were of a light fawn colour, very shaggy in appearance, some males carrying magnificent long horns. One old ram seemed to be always on the watch, kneeling down on the very verge of a crag 500 or 600 yards above us, and which commanded a view for miles—miles, did we say? paltry words! From where that goat was, he could survey half-a-dozen provinces.
These ibex were quite inaccessible, and though daily seen, nearly a week had passed away ere a wild-goat gave us a chance. One night shortly after quitting my post, little better than a human icicle, and not without fear of the dangers of scrambling cave-wards, in absolute darkness along the ice-slope, a little herd of goats passed—mere shadows—within easy shot of where, five minutes before, I had been lying in wait. On another morning at dawn the tracks of a big male showed that he, too, must have passed at some hour of the night within five-and-twenty yards of the snow-screen.
But it was not till a whole week had elapsed that we had the ibex really in our power. Just as day broke a herd of eight—two males and six females—stood not forty yards from our cave-dwelling. The fact was ascertained by one Esteban, a Spanish sportsman whom we had taken with us. Silently he stole back into the cave, and without a word, or disturbing the dreams of his still sleeping employers, picked up an "express" and went forth. Then the loud double report at our very doors—that is, had there been a door—aroused us, only to find ... the spoor of that enormous ram, the spot where he had halted, listening, close above the cave, and the splash of the lead on the rock beyond—eighteen inches too low! an impossible miss for any one used to the "express." Oh, Esteban, Esteban! what were our feelings towards you on that fateful morn!
Life in a mountain-cave high above the level of perpetual snow—six men huddled together in the narrow space, two English and four Spaniards—has its weird and picturesque, but it has also its harder side. Yet those days and nights, passed amidst majestic scenes and strange wild beasts, have left nothing but pleasant memories, nor have their hardships deterred one of us from repeating the experiment. Probably both these campaigns were too early in the season (March and April).
The only birds seen in the high sierra were choughs and ravens: ring-ouzels a little lower down. There were plenty of trout, though small, in the hill-burns. On one occasion we witnessed an extraordinary circular rainbow across a deep gorge, with our own figures perfectly reflected in the centre on passing a given point.
The ice-going abilities of the mountaineers were something marvellous—incredible save to an eye-witness. Across even a north drift, hard and "slape" as steel, and hundreds of yards in extent, these men would steer a sliding, slithering course at top speed, directed towards some single projecting rock. To miss that refuge might mean death: but they did not miss it, ever, in their perilous course, making good a certain amount of forward movement. At that rock they would settle in their minds the next point to be reached, quietly smoking a cigarette meanwhile before making a fresh start. How such performances diminish one's own self-esteem! How weak are our efforts! Even on the softer southern drifts, what balancing, what scrambling and crawling on hands and knees one finds necessary, and what a "cropper" one would have come but for the friendly arm of Enrique, who, as he arrests one's perilous slide, merely mutters "Ave Maria purissima!"
* * * * *