‘I took a careful aim at the buck, but fired too low, and the bullet broke his fore-leg, which did not prevent him from following the does, though at a reduced pace. Now I think our best chance would have been to remain perfectly still, and trust to his stopping in time in some place where I could get to him; but Jens was terribly excited, begging me to shoot, and my own head was by no means as cool as it should have been, so I sat on a rock and fired away all my remaining cartridges except two, at the gradually receding form of the reindeer: I suppose at the last shot he was five hundred yards away, and I don’t think I ever hit him again.
‘Presently he got round the corner to the right, and into the next valley, where a few days before I had killed two deer; and as I ran to the right above him an astonishing sight met my gaze. The valley was full of deer, about fifty altogether, in three distinct herds, and they were all running about frightened by the firing, and not sure in which direction it would be safe to go.
‘While we watched them from our peak a mile above, a buck and two does with a calf left the herd, and began to come towards the very snowdrift on which the four deer were lying when we made the fatal mistake. What became of the rest we never knew, nor whither our wounded buck went; for when we saw this fresh four making for the drift, it occurred to us to run towards the top and try to intercept them if they should attempt to ascend the mountain on the snow, as we expected they would.
‘Off we ran at top speed over terribly rough ground, and before we got nearly in shot of the top of the long drift we saw the deer get on to it at the bottom, and begin to gallop up with their untiring stride. It was simply a race, with long odds on the Running Rein; and soon we saw them standing at the top, while we were still over two hundred yards from it. Then for the first time they saw us (for the drift was in a ravine, and out of our sight as we ran), and they turned to flee, but Jens somehow managed to find breath enough to whistle, and the deer stopped for a moment.
‘I fired my last two cartridges, but in the condition to which I was reduced by the run I could not have hit a haystack, and no damage was done. So we turned homewards with deep and abiding sorrow in our hearts, too despondent to look again for our wounded buck, or to see what became of the other herds.
‘In those days I always took out seven cartridges, which I fondly imagined to be a lucky number; but after this I solemnly registered two vows: firstly, never to go out with so few again; and secondly, never to shoot them all away at absurd distances in the forlorn hope of killing a wounded deer.’ Esau here paused for a moment or two, and then resumed: ‘By Jove, I did make myself agreeable to the Skipper when I got home that night. I remember he said——’
But John thought it was his turn to have a few weeks’ conversation, and rudely interrupted Esau’s reminiscences by calling his attention to some writing which, like Belshazzar, he had detected on the wall above his bed. It was in pencil, and seemed to have been written in prehistoric times, for it was all illegible except the first two lines, and even those required a great deal of deciphering by the aid of a dripping candle, while Esau knelt on his bunk and flattened his nose against the log wall, before he could read them. Then after licking the tip of a pencil for a long time in meditative silence, he scrawled the remainder of the poem underneath, so that the whole composition read as follows:—
A reindeer three miles off you spy,
And to shoot that reindeer you will try.
First a mile at the top of your speed you go,