After examining the precipice for some time, we found that the only mode of access to its summit, here some three or four hundred feet above us, was by a sort of ravine, what would be called in the Swiss Alps, a cheminée a species of fracture in the strata the broken edges of which would give us some foot and hand hold: at its upper termination we could see the end of a small glacier, slightly overhanging the cliff, from which a small stream leapt from ledge to ledge, only alive in the last hour or two of sun-warmth, giving promises, which certainly were faithfully fulfilled, of additional slipperiness and discomfort. But we had no choice; we had already spent nearly an hour in our cautious circuit. Our scramble, wherever it took place, would cost us nearly another before we got above our expected prey, and if we hesitated much longer, he might take a fancy to march off altogether in search of the rest of the herd. So up we went, dragging ourselves and each other up the wet slippery rocks, getting a shivering "swish" of ice-cold water in our faces every now and then, till we got about half-way up, when, just as we were resting for a moment to take breath, we heard a tremendous roar, followed by a splintering crash just above our heads, and had the pleasure of seeing the fragments of some half-a-ton of ice, which had fallen from the glacier above, fly out from the shelf of rock under which we were resting, and spin down the rugged path we had just ascended.
Thinking that this was quite near enough to be pleasant, and "calculating" that by every doctrine of chances the same thing would not happen twice in the same half-hour, we scrambled up as fast as we could before the next instalment became due, and at last reached safely the top of the precipice.
We certainly had not much to boast of as far as walking went, when we got there, for the snow and rocks were tumbled about in a very wild manner. If we slipped off a rock, we tumbled waist-deep into the soft, melting snow-drifts, and when we tumbled on the snow, there was always some lurking rock ready to remind us of his presence by a hearty thump; however, as we were fairly above the chamois, our excitement carried us on. I do not think that Joseph swore once; we found afterwards indeed, to our cost, that in one of his involuntary summersets, he had broken the bottle, and narrowly escaped being bayoneted by the fragments: however, we did not know it then, and so scrambled on in contented ignorance, until we reached the spot on the cliffs to our right, which we had marked as being above our prey. Here, however, we found that it was impossible to get near enough to the edge to look over, as the fresh-fallen snow threatened to part company from the rock and carry us with it, on the slightest indiscretion on our parts. Crouching down in the snow, we listened for some hint of our friend's whereabouts, and had not waited more than a minute, when the faint clatter of a stone far below convinced us that he was on the move: keeping low, we wallowed along till we came to where the crest of the cliff showing a little above the snow, gave us a tolerable shelter; carefully crawling to the edge, we peeped over, and saw, as we expected, that the gems had shifted his quarters, and as luck would have it, was standing on the snow-bed half-way up the cliff, immediately below us.
Trembling, partly with excitement, and partly from the under-waistcoat of half-melted snow we had unconsciously assumed in our serpentine wrigglings, we lay and watched the graceful animal below us. He evidently had a presentiment that there was something "no canny" about the mountain-side; some eddy had perhaps reached his delicate nostrils, laden with the taint of an intruder. With his head high in the air, and his ears pointed forwards, he stood examining—as wiser brutes than he sometimes do—every point of the compass but the right. One foot was advanced; one moment more, and he would have gone; when crack! close to my ear, jut as I was screwing up my nerves for a long shot, went Joseph's heavy rifle. With a sinking heart I saw the brute take a tremendous bound, all four hoofs together, and then, like a rifle-ball glancing over the bosom of a calm lake, bound after bound carried him away and away over the snow-field, and round the corner to our right, before I had recovered my senses sufficiently to take a desperate snap at him.
What we said, or felt, or how we got over the face of that cliff, I know not. A dim recollection of falling stones and dust showering round us—pieces of treacherous rock giving way in our hands and under our feet, bruising slides, and one desperate jump over the chasm between the cliff and the snow,—and there we were both, standing pale and breathless, straining our eyes for some scarcely expected trace of blood to give us hope.
Not a drop tinged the unsullied snow at the place where he had made his first mad bound, nor at the second, nor at the third; but a few paces further on, one ruby-tinged hole showed where the hot blood had sunk through the melting snow.
Too excited to feel any uprising of envy, hatred, or malice against my more fortunate companion, I raced along the white incline, leaving him behind reloading his rifle,—which was always a sort of solemn rite with him,—and following, without difficulty, the deep indentations of the animal's hoofs, I came to where the cliff receded into a sort of small bay, with its patch of snow on the same plane with the one I was on, but separated from it by a rugged promontory of cliff and broken rock. Cautiously I scrambled round the point, removing many a stone that seemed inclined to fall and give the alarm to the watchful chamois, and peeping cautiously round the last mass of rock that separated me from the snow-patch, I saw the poor brute, standing not more than sixty yards from me, his hoofs drawn close together under him, ready for a desperate rush at the cliff at the first sound that reached him; his neck stretched out, and his muzzle nearly touching the snow, straining every sense to catch some inkling of the whereabouts of the mischief he felt was near him.
With my face glowing as if it had been freshly blistered, a dryness and lumping in my throat, as if I had just escaped from an unsuccessful display of Mr. Calcraft's professional powers, and my heart thud-thudding against my ribs at such a rate that I really thought the gems must hear it in the stillness, I raised my carbine. Once, at the neck just behind the ear, I saw the brown hide clear at the end of the barrel, but I dared not risk such a chance; and so, straining my nerves, I shifted my aim to just behind the shoulder,—one touch of the cold trigger, and as the thin gases streamed off, rejoicing at their liberation, I saw the chamois shrink convulsively when the ball struck him, and then fall heavily on the snow, shot right through the heart. With a who-whoop! that might have been heard half-way to Innspruck, I rushed up to him;—one sweep of the knife—the red blood bubbled out on to the snow that shrunk and wasted before its hot touch, as if it felt itself polluted, and there lay stretched out in all its beauty before me the first gems I ever killed—just as Joseph came up, panting, yelling, and jödling, and rejoicing at my success, without a shade of envy in his honest heart.
Now I believe, in all propriety, we ought to have been melancholy, and moralized over the slain. That rich, soft black eye, filming over with the frosty breath of death, and that last convulsive kick of the hind legs, ought perhaps to have made us feel that we had done rather a brutal and selfish thing; but they did not. This is a truthful narrative, and I must confess that our only feeling was one of unmixed rejoicing.
I have occasionally moralized over a trout, flopping about amongst the daisies and buttercups, and dying that horrible suffocation death of my causing; but it was never, if I remember right, the first trout I had killed that day. My feelings always get finer as my pannier gets fuller, particularly if it be a warm afternoon, and I have lunched.