Our first day was very unproductive, however; for though we got some red deer on foot in front of the sleuth-hounds, we never saw them. The second day was as bad, until the afternoon, when, on our way back, we heard in another quarter of the forest a furious crashing, accompanied by short fierce snortings. Old R.’s little wiry figure actually stiffened with excitement, and his eyes became more prominent even than their wont, as he gripped my arm till it ached. ‘Kabân!’ (boar) was all he seemed able to get out, and, indeed, I was little less excited myself. Motioning to the German to guard the corner of the quartal where the rides crossed, he stole stealthily along a ride towards the sounds, stopping every now and then to listen, but never letting go my unfortunate arm. The sound was close to us, and now even my untrained ears told me that the sound was much like that of pigs in deadly strife. All at once my vivacious little friend dropped my arm and pointed to something in the dense brush. The trees grew so thick here, and interlaced their limbs so closely, that the forest shade was as dark as a summer night, and I could see nothing. My friend gave me little time to look, for clapping his rifle to his shoulder he seemed to take a haphazard shot into the thick of it, and let fly. Then there followed a louder snorting, with the rending of more bushes in hurried flight, and at last I had a glimpse of three dark forms tearing through the covert. One seemed much larger than the others, and at him I fired. To my own astonishment, for the shot was a very hurried one, he lurched forward, evidently hard hit; but he instantly recovered and went on. I had a faint idea that some one was calling me back, telling me that I ought not to follow a wounded boar in thick covert; but as my hackles were now fairly up, I crept and ran as well as I could after my wounded game. The other two guns made for various rides to cut off any of the three boars that might come their way. Once or twice I viewed my beast for a moment, but never well enough to fire in my cramped position.
Meanwhile, the forester had been making what he called music on his everlasting horn, and some of his hounds hearing it were soon on the track of the game. Hot, breathless, and almost in the dark, among the nearly impenetrable thickets, I was on the point of giving up the chase when I heard the dogs baying something not far ahead of me. To creep to within thirty yards or so of them did not take long, and then crouching behind the bole of a huge oak, I waited for my eyes to get used to the darkness. Gradually I began to make out the dogs’ sterns waving eagerly to and fro, and then under a leaning tree-stump, in the very heart of the shadow, the indistinct outline of their enemy. The music all this time was maddening. The dogs’ clamour never ceased. The boar kept half growling, half grunting, while through it all in the distance came the tootle of our forester’s horn. Suddenly the mass moved, and a dog went flying belly uppermost, and his yells were added to the discord. But this movement of the boar’s was fatal to him, as it brought him into a more open position; and seizing the opportunity, I rolled him over with my ‘express.’ Rising he tried to charge, but though I fired again, I believe it was unnecessary, as he was too hard hit ever to have reached me; still I had seen a man killed by a wounded boar, and I naturally preferred to keep this one at a distance.
This was the first really large game I had killed, and I rushed up to him and gloated over him with all the abandon of a boy. I have said I had seen a man killed by a boar, but I should have added it was his dead body and not the event which I saw. Moreover, I had never seen a wild boar before this morning, and now as I contemplated my fallen foe a strange uneasiness beset me. There was something so homely in the innocent face of that dead pig, that my heart for a moment misgave me. But I banished these foolish qualms, the reaction after my triumph probably; and as I heard the tootle of my friend’s horn approach I sat myself down on a broad side of bacon and indulged in a victorious whoo-oop. And now the bushes part asunder, and R., taking in the position at a glance, bursts into a cheer and loads me with praise. But, alas! what is this? As my friend approaches, slowly the gay smile fades, the applauding voice is still; the horn drops from his nerveless grasp, and the merry little visage lengthens out in a telescopic fashion truly awful to behold. ‘Moe domaschne kabân!’ Those were the fatal words that first left his erst joyous lips—‘My own house pig!’
The blow was too awful, too sudden. In my pride I fell. Gradually the fact was borne in on my already half-awakened mind: ‘wild boars are black, but this beast was white.’ I had come some thousand miles to slay a beast which I might have found in any sty at home; I had accepted my friend’s hospitality, and rewarded it by slaying his one cherished porker. How I smoothed him down I don’t know, but I did it somehow. As for myself, I never quite recovered until I had slain a veritable wild boar long afterwards. The fact was, this wretched animal had broken out of his sty some months previously, and betaken himself to the forest to take his fill of love, chestnuts, and other pleasant things. He had apparently been making too free with the lady friends of his black-skinned brethren, and at the moment at which we arrived was doing battle with two of them for his offences. In the dark his own master had not recognised him, so that there was ample excuse for me, and there was even a good side to this mishap, inasmuch as we were all getting very tired of roe-deer’s flesh, and this forest-fed bacon was a grateful change. Dragging him home with a sapling affixed to his snout, was the poorest part of the joke.
During the next day I did not recover my spirits sufficiently to try for big game, so the German colonel and myself devoted it to pheasant-shooting. The covert consists of thick reed-beds, the birds are of the original stock from which our English birds are derived, and in no way differ from them in size or appearance. We killed very few, my dog proving utterly useless in thick covert, in consequence of which I gave her away on the first opportunity. I had no right of course to expect that she as a pointer would be useful in covert, so as the quails had gone and I should have very little open shooting for some time, I thought it better to part with her. I am told that throughout the Kuban district, the tremendous frost of 1876, together with the floods of the same year, destroyed most of the pheasants. They certainly seemed scarcer than they were during my previous visit.
At night, sitting up for big game, I saw a few woodcock flitting bat-like across the rides, but let them alone for fear of disturbing better game. The night was lovely; the fleecy white clouds, floating through the network of dark branches, produced a most charming effect. Of all the bird-mimics I ever met, commend me to the owls you meet with here. At one moment they bark like a fox; at another, yell like an evil-minded infant; at another, you hear them grunting like swine, and creep on noiseless feet towards the spot, rifle ready in hand; and then the wretches shriek out in eldritch laughter at your mistake, and flap clumsily off to repeat the trick further on.
My last day in the Red Forest was spent in an ‘ablouva’ (drive), which, being utterly mismanaged, resulted in nothing but a wild cat and a few hares. In the evening the German colonel and myself had a very hot discussion about the habits of the pheasants. He apparently had shot both the ordinary and the silver pheasant in different parts of Asia, and stoutly maintained that the pheasant never roosted on a tree or bush, but invariably on the ground. My own assertion that with us the pheasant roosts in trees as a rule, and seldom, if ever, on the ground, was ridiculed by both the German and the forester, which, as both appeared to be fairly keen observers, would lead one to believe that the perching of our pheasants is an acquired habit, and not common to their wild congeners.
As we wended our way homeward, we heard in front of us the bells of a troika, and on the bridge we overtook it. The horses were stopped, and a volley of Russian salutations, in a voice that might have shaken the clouds, greeted us, while slowly from the folds of a dozen or more wraps, a grim, gaunt figure of an old Cossack colonel, about 6 feet 3 inches in length, unrolled itself. The old gentleman was vociferous to a degree, and much given to kissing and bebrothering his friends. Having hugged the forester several times, almost shaken my arm out of its socket, and given a multitude of directions to the driver, whom he addressed alternately as ‘son of a dog’ and ‘little dove,’ he unearthed a quart bottle of vodka, and patting it fondly, conveyed it to the forester’s hut, there to give his host a drink, and tell us all about himself. Although very red-faced and very grey-haired, this veteran was about as fine a Cossack as any I ever saw, with the boisterous manners of an English schoolboy, added to the peculiarities natural to a Russian. In about ten minutes he had put me through the usual catechism, to which time and experience had taught me to submit with the greatest placidity. Who was my father? What was my trade? Was I rich? Married? Why did I come here, &c.? To all these questions I had regular stereotyped answers. But when to the last I answered that my only object was to kill big game, the old gentleman’s interest considerably increased. He, too, was a sportsman, and knew the Caucasus better than any man living, having spent his whole life in fighting in it. At this very moment he was on his way to an estate of his, three days’ journey from the Red Forest, on the Black Sea coast, where bears and boars (if one were to believe him) were so numerous as to seriously impede one’s movements. Would I come with him and see for myself? Naturally, as an Englishman I imagined little was meant by such an off-hand invitation as this; but to my surprise the forester backed up his suggestion, assuring me that if I did not assent I should miss a chance I might never get again. Only half credulous, and never expecting it would come to anything, I assented, and, before I well knew where I was, my things were bundled into the tarantasse, myself after them, the old Cossack on top of all, the farewells said, and I was under way again for Ekaterinodar.
The days of preparation passed in Ekaterinodar had in them nothing worth recording; I gave up my portmanteau finally and for ever as too large to travel through the mountains on horseback, and bought myself instead some Tscherkess saddle-bags, in which I stowed three flannel shirts and a few other things. My gun, too, I was obliged to leave behind, and thus on the morning of our departure my entire kit had been reduced to a rifle and small saddle-bags, half full of cartridges and gunning implements. We were to have one other travelling companion, an excessively corpulent cavalry officer; and if I had little luggage, this worthy made amends for my deficiencies. Pillows innumerable, bags and food enough to last through a campaign, while, as to bottles, I really began to think he must be starting as a peddling wine or vodka merchant. All this, as well as our three selves, had to be piled on one fourgon, or four-wheeled open cart, and when all the luggage had been stacked on it, and our hapless selves perched on top, we presented a picture of about as unlikely a group to travel far without falling out by the way as could be readily imagined. The old Cossack got wedged between two of the largest packages, and was thus pretty safe, but the ‘plunger’ and myself, sitting each on some shifting packages of loaves, sardine-tins, or what not, had an exceedingly merry time of it. Briskly our horses trotted along in the keen morning air; the roads were hard with frost, and as the heavy cart lurched from rut to rut, and bounded from hole to hole, we two resembled nothing so much as a pair of erratic human shuttlecocks. As luck would have it, both of us returned from our aërial flights in time to go on with the cart, but at what an expense of finger-nails and other bruises none but ourselves can tell. As for the ‘plunger,’ the exercise acted on him like a rough sea passage, and before long he was grievously ill, and I frankly admit that in another hour I should have been as bad.