Nor were my men much less tired; for when I woke with a shiver at dawn, one of them was asleep with his skewer of grilled pork almost untouched by his side. Of this I speedily relieved him, and, raking together the embers of the fire, which my men had made under the flooring the night before, I re-cooked the kabobs, and breakfasted, not perhaps sumptuously, but with an appetite that made amends for any defects in the cooking.
Whilst the men still slept, I went down to the sea for a swim and a look at the country round us. Looking from the sea you saw nothing but endless hills, growing gradually into mountains, as they receded farther and farther from the shore. Everywhere they seemed covered with forest, the greater part of which was composed of Spanish chestnut trees. Except a solitary eagle, a few porpoises rolling about near in shore, and one of my men coming down now to collect drift-wood, there was no sign of life anywhere. After helping to light the fire and brew the tea, I sent Yepheem to look for the horses, which were nowhere in sight, and meanwhile Ivan and I took our rifles and tried another part of the forest. We had gone but a very little way when the dog gave tongue, and was evidently driving something through the bushes towards us. Ivan ran in one direction, I in another, to cut off the game. Standing behind a big tree at the foot of a small hill, covered with rhododendron clumps, I heard a rustling through the covert, such as some small animal might make if quietly forcing his way through. I never dreamed it was our game, but was still intently listening for the crashing charge I was beginning to know so well. Looking in the direction of the rustling, I was thunderstruck to see three magnificent grey old boars following one another in single file down hill, straight to my tree. The almost cat-like noiselessness with which large and clumsy animals can move about in thick covert, is almost more wonderful than the tremendous noise even small ones make when so minded. I picked out the leading boar, fired, and with a thundering rush they were gone. How I could have missed him I don’t know, but I apparently did clean, and for the rest of that day I found it harder than ever not to speak somewhat unadvisedly with my lips when a long loop of ‘wolf’s tooth’ caught me up under the nose, or a hazel wand flew back and cut me over the ear.
Later on in the afternoon we were all three walking abreast, with perhaps a hundred yards between each gun, when I caught a glimpse of Ivan stealthily scrambling up an old stump, from which elevated position he aimed carefully, for what seemed about five minutes, at something almost under his feet. Then followed the click that denotes a missfire, and a great crashing amidst the rhododendron bushes, as a big brown bear scuttled away in undignified flight. Some minutes afterwards, whilst Ivan with many curses was descending from the stump, his valuable piece went off, luckily damaging no one.
Except some wild boars seen by Yepheem, this was the last game we saw during the day, although we came across regular roads made by bears and swine, and one patch of several acres, which from the broken fruit-trees and trampled state of the ground appeared to be a regular bear den. The quantity of fruit one meets with in these Circassian forests compensates in some measure for persecutions of the ‘wolf’s tooth’ and other thorny creepers. Large apples, walnuts, grapes, ‘fourmar’ (an edible berry for which I do not know any other name), medlars, blackberries, dewberries, and a kind of scarlet plum, occur frequently, and whereever they occur the trees are smashed into ruins by the bears. You begin to get some notion of the power of a bear when you have seen the enormous boughs he has broken in his greed for fruit. To-night the jackals were calling all round us, but the wily little beasts never gave me a shot.
In the morning Yepheem woke us with the pleasant intelligence that our horses had been stolen. A drover had passed along the coast whilst we were shooting the day before, and suspicion immediately settled on his party. Of course after this news there was no hunting for us to-day, for while Ivan and Yepheem scoured the country for our missing steeds, I had to sit at home and watch. At nightfall the best news they could give me was that the Cossacks on the station at which we had slept on our way hither had lost six of their horses at the same time.
I had time during the day to examine the insect life about our camp, and amongst the butterflies I noticed all three meadow browns, quantities of very large brimstones, a fritillary, and a wood argus, whilst amongst the moths I recognized quantities of the gamma and the humming-bird hawk moth.
When we went down to the shore to bathe, huge shoals of what looked like bass were playing close in shore, but alas we had no means of securing any, though they would have been a noble addition to our ill-found larder.
Last night, whilst writing up my journal, with my legs dangling from a rafter, and a great wood fire burning by my side, by which the men lay curled in their bourkas, the wind that came moaning through the open places in the wall brought with it a sound between a child’s wail and a wolf’s howl, which was so distinct from the jackals’ cries that it arrested my attention at once. The men sprang to their feet simultaneously, and with excited faces whispered ‘barse’ (panther). At our backs was the ruined doorway through which the forest trees stretched their arms; in our front was the huge empty window place with thickets of briar and thorn half blinding it, and right under it the sound seemed. For a moment I believe the same feeling was on all of us, that the next event would be the entrance of our serenader by either door or window. However, this wore off at once, and snatching up my rifle I crept to the window place to try to make out the beast in the moonlight. But outside all was a maze of shadowy limbs and dark places, with every here and there a brilliant patchwork of moonshine; and though I went outside and carefully beat all round our camp I could not catch sight of the barse.
To-night, having had a lazy day in camp, I was by no means in a hurry to roll myself up in the least draughty corner, so taking my rifle, having constructed a night sight for it, I betook myself to the beach to await our last night’s visitor should he repeat his visit.
The hills near Heiman’s Datch come down almost to the high-water line, so that sitting hidden under some drift-wood I had the forest close at my back, and a little above me; so close indeed as to suggest the possibility of a sudden spring from the bushes to my hiding place if any beast had the courage to try it. Before me lay some forty yards at most of strand, and beyond a perfectly calm and silent sea. Far up in one of the valleys at my back two wolves were answering each other, and away towards Duapsè I could hear some jackals fighting over some carrion they had found.