But the game was not bagged yet, although Littledale had settled down to skin one beast, and the hunter was preparing to skin the other.
In turning his ram over, on the steep incline upon which it lay, the hunter lost control of it, and, in spite of his efforts, the dead beast broke away from him, rolling over and over at first, and then going in great bounds down the mountain until it lay on a snow-bank several thousand feet below, upon which it appeared, even through the field-glass, a mere speck. This misfortune complicated matters, and in order to save both heads, Littledale was obliged to let both hunters go down to the fallen tûr and pass the night alongside of it, whilst he was left to find his way back to camp alone. This generally sounds much easier than it is, and so Littledale found it upon this occasion. As evening approaches, the mists begin to sail about among the crags, first like great ostrich plumes, and then growing larger and more dense, until they make the smooth places difficult and the difficult places impossible. I have myself a very vivid memory to this day of a certain rock to which I had to cling for half an hour until one of these mist-wreaths floated away, leaving me almost too stiff and tired to climb down, and far too tired to climb up any higher, though a wounded ibex was above me. As for Littledale, upon this occasion he put his best foot forward and made all the speed he could to get off the ridge, and on to better going. For hours he had to grope his way along a precipitous ridge, in dense fog, throwing small stones down either side from time to time to tell by the sound whether he was still upon the main ridge or not. Only now and again did a gleam of sunshine break through the mist, and in a few hours the sun would set.
It was a horrible position for a lonely man, uncertain where his camp lay and tired with three days’ hard work; but Littledale’s cup was not yet full.
THE SPECTRE
The Caucasians, like all mountaineers, are full of superstitions. Gods and devils haunt their mountains now as they did when the ancients only knew them as a part of misty Turan, the home of storm and evil, or at least the mountain men so believe. And what wonder? As Littledale stopped to scrape together a few more fragments with which to sound the abysses on either side of him, he noticed with a shudder a huge figure crouching in the mist beside him. As he sprang to his feet the awful shape reared up, and small blame to a level-headed and cool man if he did not remember, until his express was pressing against his shoulder, that there was such a thing as the spectre of the Brocken, and that this huge shape which followed and mimicked his every action was, after all, only his own shadow in the clouds.
It was long after this that, lying at the top of a ravine which had taken him an hour and a half to climb, he struck a light to find a few more pebbles and get a drink, and found as he bent down his own track of that morning.
He says the sight of it made him feel years younger, and those who have been in such tight places and found their way out of them will know the feeling; but it was 10 p.m. when he got back to his camp, and here are the last words in his notes: ‘Reached home a little after ten, had some food in bed, and registered a vow that I had done my last solitary scramble in the Caucasus.’
I have registered that vow many times, when cold, and starving, and dead tired, with hands and feet bleeding, and no massive ‘head’ to compensate me for my toil; but I have never kept my vow, and I venture to doubt whether my much more successful fellow-sportsman will keep his.