I declare that when I saw them coming as straight as they could in my direction, making a rendezvous of the hole where I was hiding, a mist came over my eyes. Through this veil, which spread between the hares and me, I could see them advancing rapidly; and, the nearer they came, the louder did my heart beat. Although the thermometer stood six degrees below zero, perspiration ran down my face. The hare that headed the column seemed determined to charge straight at me. I had taken aim at it the moment it started; I ought to have let it approach within twenty or ten or five paces; but I had not the strength: when it was within about thirty paces, I fired full in its face.
It turned head to tail in a significant way, and began a series of most remarkable contortions. It was evidently hit.
I bounded out of my hole like a jaguar, shouting:
"Here it is! I have got it! Slip the dogs, you rogue, you scoundrel, ... wait, wait!"
The hare heard me, and made the wildest gyrations; of its two companions, one turned back on its tracks and took the beaters by storm, the other continued in its course and passed so close to me that, my gun being empty, I flung it at her.
But this incidental hostility had not turned me from the principal pursuit. I rushed upon my hare, which was still performing the most incoherent and extravagant gymnastics, not advancing four steps in any straight line; it leapt from side to side; then bounded forwards, next backwards; deceiving all my calculations, as my father had deceived those of his crocodile, by running to right and then to left; it escaped just as I thought I had got hold of it; it gained ten steps on me as though it hadn't a scratch on it; then it suddenly doubled back, and ran between my legs—one would have said as though for a wager. I did not shout this time; I simply yelled; I picked up stones and threw them at it. When I believed I was just on it, I fell flat on my stomach, hoping to crush it between my body and the earth as in a trap. In the distance I could see through a sort of haze the other shooters, half laughing, half furious; laughing at the exercise I was giving myself, furious at the noise and stir I was causing in the centre of the battue, which was turning back all the hares. At last, after unprecedented efforts, I caught mine by one paw, then by both, then round its body: it uttered despairing cries, and I held it against my breast, as Hercules held Antæus, and I went back to my hole, taking care to pick up my gun, as I passed it, where I had thrown it down.
When I returned to my quarters I examined my hare attentively, and I discovered what had happened. I had put out its eyes without wounding it anywhere else.
I broke its neck by the famous blow which kills a hare, although Arnal calls it the rabbit-blow.
Then I re-loaded my gun, my heart still thumping and my hand shaking. It occurred to me that I was making the charge extra strong, but I was sure of the gun, and the excess of four or five inches would give me a chance to kill at longer range.
I had hardly got back into position before I saw another hare coming straight for me.