First, there is the large red deer which generally inhabit the high mountains and are difficult to get, except when the winter snow drives them down into the lower grounds. I have been fortunate enough to kill several of these splendid animals during my sojourn in Turkey. I will give my readers an account of how I shot two of them. One day during the winter, when the mountains were covered with snow, I received news that three deer of the largest description were in a ravine at the foot of a mountain some six hours" distance from Ismidt. I immediately started off in pursuit. I must mention that all persons of high rank in Turkey have, or had at the time I write of, by their shooting firman, the right to call upon the villagers in the neighbourhood in which they are shooting to a.s.sist in driving or searching for game. In my case it was not necessary to take advantage of such an offer; every one was on the alert for my arrival. The people told me that that very morning they had seen the n.o.ble beasts I was after, grazing outside the wood. So, gathering the villagers, boys carrying horns, men (much against my will) carrying guns, accompanied by every available dog, from the grand shepherd"s dog to the yapping cur of the village, off we started.
The ravine was thickly wooded, and extended far up the mountain, where it ended in a bare spot without trees. To this place I went alone, leaving the crowd behind me with directions not to move till I was in my place, which instruction they most strictly followed. After half an hour"s walk I arrived at the place I have named. I had hardly time to regain my breath when I heard a row below me as if Bedlam had been let loose. I loaded my gun with buckshot in one barrel and ball in the other, and remained as quiet as a mouse. As the noise of the beaters and dogs approached me, I heard a crash in the bushes within about forty yards of me, and presently a magnificent stag as big as a cow came slowly out of the cover, looking behind him, evidently not expecting an enemy in front. As soon as he was well clear of the bushes, I fired at him with buckshot and killed him dead. I hardly had time to think, when, with a tremendous rush, two other large deer broke out of the wood straight at me at full gallop. I fired a bullet at the foremost one, which turned back into the woods apparently wounded, and so it proved, for it ran among the beaters, evidently having lost its head, and was soon despatched among dogs, men and guns. He was a stag also, and as I claimed to have shot him, I may say that I had the luck to shoot a brace of splendid stags right and left. There is not a sportsman in Europe who would not have been delighted at such a chance of red deer like these; such as are not seen anywhere except in Asia Minor. The largest one had nineteen points to his antlers, weighed when cleaned a hundred and fifteen okes, equal to three hundred and twenty pounds English measure, and certainly was the largest stag I have ever met with, either in Scotland or in Austria. During the sixteen years that I have pa.s.sed in the East I have only succeeded in killing four of these splendid animals. This I attribute very much to the want of proper deerhounds, which unfortunately I have not been able to procure.
The crowd of beaters make so much noise that the deer slip away at the sides of the thick covers unseen, whereas dogs would drive them more in a straight line towards the shooters if they are properly posted. In addition to this, it is always a great advantage when the hounds give tongue, and so warn the sportsman of the whereabouts of the game. These hounds, called "colpoys," can be procured in Roumania and Hungary. There is another description of deer found near the sea-coast in some parts of Asia Minor, which I will describe. It is in fact the pure wild fallow deer that stocks the parks of Europe, and if I am rightly informed is only to be found wild in Asia Minor, and even there it is rare.
I understand that in India or in Africa, where there are hundreds of different sorts of deer, the real fallow is not to be found. While shooting at a place called Camaris, near to Gallipoli, two years since, I discovered several herds of these deer, beautiful creatures, wild as hawks, and accordingly laid myself out to shoot some of them if possible. I tried driving, stalking, and every manuvre to circ.u.mvent them, without success. At last one day I started with my beaters to a place where there were many tracks of fallow deer. I was posted at a sort of small mountain pen, having on one side of me a young friend of mine, and at the other a native (these fellows won"t go out unless they are allowed to carry their guns).
Shortly after the beaters had begun to halloo, a fallow hind glided by between me and my young friend, like a ghost. Not a sound in the wood gave notice of its approach. It was even quieter in its movements than a hare would have been. I put up my gun to fire, but seeing my friend"s head right in the way and in a line with its muzzle, I waited a second, but the deer was gone. I had scarcely got over my disappointment when I heard the branches breaking in the wood very near to me, and suddenly a deer sprang right over my head, taking a flying leap, like a hunter would do over a fence.
This unusual action on the part of the deer called for unusual action on my part. As he had taken a flying leap over my head, I took a flying shot at him a second before he landed on the other side of me. The result was that he rolled over like a rabbit, shot _from underneath_ through the heart. This deer proved to be a very fine specimen of the fallow, every point showing him to be of that species, except his antlers, which were quite straight. This I cannot account for; the natives, who had remarked this deer on several occasions feeding with the herd of fallow deer, called it the "Ca.s.sic Boa," which means "straight-horned." Some time after this I had some good sport with the fallow deer. Having got more accustomed to their habits, I found that it was of no use trying to approach them, their scent being too keen, their eyesight too sharp; the only way to get them is by very careful, in fact I may say scientific, driving.
Good boar shooting may be had by going some little distance from Constantinople. It usually is done either by beaters or with boarhounds; but I have had very good sport at boar while hunting for woodc.o.c.ks and pheasants, in what may be called covert shooting--not exactly English covert shooting, in which almost every tree is known by the keepers, but in coverts of great extent, in which there are almost impa.s.sable thickets, made still more impa.s.sable by a well-known bramble called the "wait a bit," a thing that hooks on to your eyelids as you pa.s.s.
There it is that in these coverts spaniels, half-English, half country-bred dogs, do frequently the work of beaters, and it is a strange fact that while piggy starts at once from his lair at the approach of the boarhounds, he will not budge an inch for the little yapping spaniel, whom he treats with contempt.
I have known many instances when, on hearing a jolly row in the covert, I have crawled in on my hands and knees, and found a boar being bayed by my spaniels--in fact, I have killed more pigs in this way than in any other. The danger is that you may have your dogs killed by the boar; this has happened to me on one or two occasions, more especially with young dogs.
I had once a cunning old spaniel dog (poor "d.i.c.k," well known to most sportsmen out here), who has frequently come out of the wood with his mouth full of pig"s hair, he evidently having torn the hair off the animal while laying in his lair. (d.i.c.k was never hurt by a pig.) I have often surrounded, with my brother sportsmen and myself, large bushes in which the piggies were securely hidden, driven them out, and shot them as one would do hares or rabbits.
I have heard a good deal of the danger of pig shooting, on account of the savage propensities of the animal; but I have found that, with very rare exceptions, the Anatolian wild boar always runs. It is true that they (she or he, the females are the most savage) have a nasty knack of giving a sort of jerk with their heads, when fighting or even pa.s.sing an enemy, and that jerk means to a man the ripping up of his leg from his heel to his thigh, to a dog the tearing open of his entrails.
On one occasion I was out c.o.c.k shooting, when some shepherds" dogs in a valley adjoining that in which I was walking started a large wild boar, a beast they call a "_solitaire_," from the fact that he is always seen after a certain time of life alone. The animal made for a ridge dividing the valleys; on getting there he pa.s.sed along the sky-line, about eighty yards from where I was. I changed my cartridges and fired a ball at the pig, who rushed away, apparently unshot; on going to the spot, however, where he had pa.s.sed when I fired, I found some drops of blood. This blood I traced for about half a mile, till I came to a large clump of bushes into which my spaniels dashed, evidently close to their game. I heard a tremendous row in the bushes, had hardly time to prepare when the great beast with his eyes all bloodshot and foaming at the mouth rushed straight at me. I was on a narrow path, from which there was no escape, as the boar was tearing up it, followed by the dogs. I fired a ball straight in his face, at the distance of about two yards, in spite of which he rushed straight on, knocked me clean over, and while pa.s.sing me made the usual dangerously effective jerk I have alluded to above, by which he cut my _boot from the ankle to the thigh_, drew a little blood just above and inside of the knee; after which the boar rushed headlong for about thirty yards and dropped dead. I found that my bullet had smashed through his forehead straight between the eyes and gone into his brain.
He was an enormous brute, weighing when cleaned twenty-one stone; carrying the finest tusks I have seen anywhere as belonging to a wild boar. I only had one man with me; we were what may be called eight miles from anywhere. Still I was determined not to leave my prize; so I sent my man for a country waggon, and sitting down on my now harmless beast, smoked cigarettes and waited quietly till the vehicle came.
Now, _apropos_ to wild boar attacking people, I am convinced that this animal had no intention of attacking me.
He was, though badly wounded by the first shot, running from the dogs, and I got in his way. _Voila tout_! On only one other occasion I nearly came to grief while boar shooting. On my arriving at a Turkish village one night, I was told that there was an enormous boar in the neighbourhood, who for a long time had been the terror of the country, inasmuch as he, accompanied by a large party of the pig tribe, had rooted up the crops all round the village, destroyed gardens, and tradition even said had killed children and eaten them (this latter story I don"t take in). However, the poor people prayed me with tears in their eyes to rid them of their enemy, which I promised to do if possible. So the next morning off we started in the following order: first, myself and friends, accompanied by the elders of the village armed with old-fashioned guns; then the young men with knives and big sticks, the women and children bringing up the rear as lookers-on. I and my two friends were escorted into the centre of a large wood, in which very original _seats in trees_ had been knocked up for us. The object of these seats was for our personal safety, but I as a sportsman saw at once that to be up a tree was not only advantageous in that respect, but also that we should be much more invisible, hidden among the branches of a tree, than by being stationed on the ground. So we mounted our trees, and the beaters went into the woods some half a mile from us. I never heard such a row as they made when they began the drive; they beat drums, fired guns, rang bells, and it was evident to me that no wild beast would hold to his lair under such a torrent of abuse. I found the words they were using were curses on the wild boar. I saw two or three fallow deer glide past me, with their usual ghostlike silence, and shortly afterwards the woods very near me seemed to shake with something coming. Suddenly some fifteen to twenty wild boar appeared among the bushes, coming straight towards me. The first of these was an enormous brute, evidently _the_ boar we wanted.
I heard shots on either side of me from my friends, but I kept my eye on the big boar. To my astonishment he came right under the tree where I was sitting, and stopped to listen.
He c.o.c.ked his head on one side, looked all round him, but forgot to look up the tree he was quite close to, in which was his enemy.
Taking advantage of this I fired a ball and an S.S.G. cartridge into him, before he could make up his mind which way to go; he gave a tremendous grunt and rolled over. I had not time to be overjoyed at my luck before I found myself rolling on the ground alongside of my victim, who, not being dead, was by no means a pleasant companion. The fact is that the seat on which I had been perched, having been very carelessly put up, had given way, and down I came from a height of about twelve feet. The branches of the tree had broken my fall, but my gun had fallen out of my hand and I had sprained my ankle, so that I was in rather an awkward position. The boar was shot through the spine, and could not get along, though he made frantic efforts to get at me.
It was of no use my calling out for help; everybody was calling out, everybody was excited, firing at the lots of pigs that were running about in all directions. At the moment when I began to think affairs somewhat serious (I tried to get up and walk, but could not do so on account of my ankle), as the boar was crawling towards me, looking very mischievous, two great shepherd"s dogs arrived on the scene, and went straight in for my enemy. Poor beast! He made a gallant fight; he could hardly move, but he could use his head, and he tore one of the dogs open in a frightful way; then two or three men came up, but they were afraid to go near to the boar. I made them hand me my gun that was lying on the ground near me, with which I soon put a stop to the battle. Then all the people began to muster round their dead enemy, and it was laughable to see and hear how they abused and kicked the body of the pig. How to get the carca.s.s away was the next question. We sent for two waggons and four or five Christians (as the Turks won"t touch pig), one to carry me, the others the boar; so, after being placed in the waggons, we made with piggy a triumphant return to the village. Luckily the village was on the sea-sh.o.r.e, and my yacht was lying close to the land, so I got on board comfortably; but it was several days before I could walk.
I believe that that pig was _nasty_, and would have given me the jerk if he could have done so. Five other boar were killed on that occasion, one of my friends killing two; but I had the honour of killing _the_ boar of the period in that part of the world. While referring to that neighbourhood, I would mention that it was within five miles of the place I have been writing about that poor Captain Selby, of H.M.S.
"Rapid," was killed, some two years since. There are people who think that he was attacked and murdered by robbers. Such is not the case; his death was a most unfortunate occurrence brought on by a misunderstanding.
It is true that the man who shot poor Selby was an ignorant savage, but there was no premeditation. It was a word and a blow. The latter, though inexcusable to the last degree, was given by a ruffian whose cla.s.s are in the habit of shooting and stabbing one another (let alone strangers, whom they detest) at the slightest provocation. They are not natives of Turkey, but come of strange tribes who live far away and are hired to guard the sheep in the winter months, returning to their homes in the summer. I went myself to the spot where the sad occurrence took place shortly afterwards, and found the people very penitent and very frightened. Let us hope that the punishment awarded to the princ.i.p.al actors in the sad affair will be a salutary warning for the future.
As brigandage may be considered as in some way connected with sporting, inasmuch as many refrain from going out shooting when they fear being robbed and murdered, I will say a few words about brigandage in Anatolia.
I have been for seventeen years an ardent lover of sport in Turkey, and have generally shot in Asia Minor. I have slept in villages that were supposed to be inhabited by brigands. I have been almost alone among an armed crowd of beaters, all of whom had the reputation of being robbers, but I have never been robbed or threatened with robbery. Perhaps there exists a sort of sympathy between brigands and sportsmen, for I cannot call to mind any instance of a sportsman being robbed. It is true that sometimes a fat financier, or rich _rentier_, who may have called himself a sportsman, has been carried off and ransom demanded for him, but a real sportsman never.
It is true that in some of the villages where dwell the peoples of a nation I am not supposed to love, you are liable to and probably will be _exploite_ to a considerable extent in the way of pilfering cartridges, &c., but it is their nature to. So, brother sportsmen, when you come out here take your abode in Turkish villages.
CHAPTER XXI.
SPORT AND SOCIETY.
I have mentioned, in what I have written above relating to sport, the name of a somewhat celebrated spaniel of mine, whose name was "d.i.c.k."
The commencement of this bow-wow"s career was as strange as the many adventures he afterwards went through. When he was quite a young dog, he once worked with me all day in ice and snow, and at last fell down lifeless. A heavy snowstorm was raging, and as poor d.i.c.k seemed quite dead, we made him a grave in the snow and covered him up with leaves and bushes. We accomplished this with difficulty, on account of the blinding snow and the streams that were much swollen by torrents from the mountains. d.i.c.k"s burial-place was about eight miles from where the vessel was lying. We all got on board that night. I was deeply grieved at the loss of the dog, who had already shown great promise as a first-cla.s.s sporting dog, a most difficult thing to procure in this country. What was our astonishment the next morning at daylight to see d.i.c.k on the beach, making piteous howls to draw attention to his whereabouts. He was warmly welcomed, as may be supposed; he did not seem a bit the worse for his brief sojourn in the grave, and went out shooting again the same day as happy as ever. This enthusiastic little spaniel was always doing strange things; he followed every fox and every badger into their holes, and we have had, time after time, to dig him out covered with blood and fearfully mauled, after having pa.s.sed perhaps twenty-four hours in the earth.
Mr. d.i.c.k generally hunted alone, occasionally coming near to see that I was all right. Now this sounds bad for d.i.c.k"s qualities as a sporting dog, but such a dog is necessary in a thickly-wooded region such as I shot in, when one wants to know what is in the country.
d.i.c.k, when he found anything, barked loudly; and this drew attention to the fact that there was game in that quarter. Sometimes, of course, he drove the game away; at others he drove it towards me. At all events he went to places where I never could have gone. On one occasion I heard a great noise among some long reeds near a lake were I was duck shooting--d.i.c.k barking, some other animal making a strange noise. This went on so long that at last I went to see what was the matter. After much trouble I got into the reeds and approached the noise, which was momentarily getting worse. On coming close I found an animal about d.i.c.k"s size standing on its hind legs and fighting with its fore paws, d.i.c.k covered with blood, fighting hard and watching an opportunity to close with his enemy. On my approach the animal dropped on to fore paws and endeavoured to escape, on which d.i.c.k jumped on to him, thus making it very difficult for me to use my gun. However, at last, by watching my opportunity, I fired a shot which disposed of the fighting powers of the beast, which turned out to be a very large badger. I never could understand what he was doing so far away from his place of refuge. Was he after ducks, or what? The animal was at least a quarter of a mile away from dry land, being in the middle of a marsh, overgrown with reeds. Another of Mr. d.i.c.k"s adventures ended more unfortunately for him, as I fear he never got over its effects. I again, as on the last occasion, heard him evidently furiously engaged with something in a thick wood. After crawling on my hands and knees for some time, I found d.i.c.k and two other of my spaniels in furious combat with an enormous wild cat, who when I came up was holding her own against the dogs. The beast got her back against a tree, and was fighting all three dogs, keeping them at a respectful distance. My man seized a piece of wood, more like a little tree than a stick, and made a blow at the cat, which blow unfortunately came down with great force on d.i.c.k"s head. The poor dog lay senseless for some time, and then crawled away, seeming to say, "I"ll have nothing more to do with you." He never recovered that blow, and became quite a different dog, dying some months afterwards.
The feathered game shooting is very good in the neighbourhood of Constantinople. Pheasants, though rare, may be obtained five or six in a day. I have killed fifteen to my own gun, and with a party of three we bagged sixty-six in three days.
Snipe shooting is also very good. An idea of the bags that may be made will be seen when I say that at Besika Bay, close to the Dardanelles, I killed in three days three hundred and three snipe, an average of one hundred and one a day. When there is snow lying on the hills there are plenty of c.o.c.k; myself and two friends having killed in three days two hundred and ninety-eight long bills.
My best bag in c.o.c.k has been sixty-three in one day"s shooting alone. I have lately taken to punting after ducks, and have been very successful.
One gets twenty to thirty a day, and occasionally a swan. I once killed four of the latter with one shot from my punt gun (one of Holland & Holland"s). Hares are not very numerous; to get three or four in a day is counted good luck; but one generally picks up one or two during a day"s shooting. Thus the sum of what you have in this country is red deer, fallow deer, roe deer, pigs, wolves, and bears (as to the latter, rare), hares, pheasants, c.o.c.ks, snipe, quails, and ducks; so that a man who lays himself out for sport and has a yacht can have plenty of amus.e.m.e.nt between September and March.
The coast of Karamania, taking in all the coast from some distance below Smyrna, pa.s.sing Rhodes and so on to the Gulf of Ayas, affords all the way along capital sport to yachting men. For example, in the large gulfs of Boudroum and Marmorice, capital anchorage will be found, and a country almost virgin as far as sport is concerned.
Some years since, while commanding an English ship-of-war, I had the good fortune to be sent on a roving commission against pirates that were supposed to infest that coast. Somehow I always _imagined_ that pirates were more or less sportsmen, so I hunted for them in places that looked gamey, and thus made the acquaintance of many almost unknown, or at all events unfrequented, harbours and creeks, in which I had famous sport.
On the coast of Karamania the ibex is to be found in considerable quant.i.ties; the red-legged partridge and the francolin are also very abundant, and give capital sport.
There are also at the head of the gulf I have alluded to large marshes for duck and snipe. The most celebrated, because the best known place in the part I am alluding to, is the Gulf of Ayas, into which runs the well-known (to all naval sportsmen) river called the Jihoon. A yacht must anchor at some distance off the entrance of this river, but the anchorage is quite safe in all weathers. Getting over the bar of the river is a matter at times of considerable difficulty, but once inside the bar you are in the paradise of shooting. A small steam launch is necessary to stem the strong current, and to tow another boat up with tents, provisions, &c. It is true that in my time we had no steam launches, and I shall not forget the hard work we had to take two boats sufficiently far up the river to get well into the shooting grounds, and even after two days" struggling we did not arrive so far as I should have wished (we, in fact, only got four miles up the stream). Still we had some rare sport, the more especially with pigs and francolin. The morning after we had pitched our tents some wandering Arabs came to us and offered to beat the woods, which they declared to be full of wild boar. They told us that the habit of these animals was, on being driven, to take to the river and swim to the other side; so we placed our guns along the banks and told the boat to guard the river from pigs swimming across, and try to stop them as best they could. The guns available for the sh.o.r.e work consisted of myself and two friends and my c.o.xswain, who was armed with a ship"s rifle. The Arabs went into the bush on horseback; the beat had hardly begun when a lot of pigs were started, all making for the river; three of these were knocked over. As they approached several others dashed into the river, and a most amusing hunt was made after them by the sailors. Not being armed with rifles, their weapons of offence against piggy were revolvers, ropes, and the stretchers of the boats.
There was, as may be supposed, great excitement among the men when the pigs took to the water; they at once went at them, firing revolvers, pulling after them as they swam, using language not allowed in these refined days in the navy; and, before we got to the scene of action they had la.s.soed as it were two fine pigs, and tied them to trees on the river-side, and when we arrived were firing their revolvers at them apparently with very little effect; however, we soon gave the animals the _coup de grace_. Thus we killed five pigs in our first drive. We took the liver, alias fry, out of the pigs to eat (it is most excellent), cut off the heads of the tuskers, and hung the remaining parts on a tree to wait our return, changing our camp further up the river the same night. The next morning early I took a stroll into the woods by myself; while looking about me I saw what I thought was a large animal sleeping in the bushes. I began accordingly to stalk him. I got within eighty yards, put my gun up to shoot, but as I could not pitch on a vital part to aim at, only seeing a ma.s.s of what was evidently an animal rolled up, I went nearer and nearer; in fact, little by little, I got within ten yards of the quarry; then I fired a ball into what I now saw was a huge pig. No move! What did it mean? I could not have killed it sleeping. However, I took courage and went close and put my hand on the beast; what should it be but an immense boar lying dead in his lair.
He must have died months before I found him, as the skin fell to pieces on being touched, the hair into powder; his head was a splendid one, but I could only save the jawbones, in which were a grand pair of tusks.
The moral of this was that pigs, like everything else, die--sometimes quietly in their beds, be that retreat only a lair in the forest; but it is a rare occurrence to find relics of wild animals in so perfect a state. I fancy their friends and relations generally eat them. The bed or lair he was lying in was a most snug spot, and he would have been quite invisible had not some of the brushwood been burnt away, Arab fashion, a short time before I found him.
I must warn any sportsman intending to shoot in the Jihoon river that the wandering Arabs who are to be found there, though not brigands of a high order, are petty thieves to the last degree. We were always obliged to keep a watch in our tents, leaving a man behind in charge when we went on shooting excursions. On one occasion we found on our return that our watchman had captured an old woman whom he caught in the act of creeping under the tent and stealing a spoon. I had myself a curious adventure. An Arab told me that he knew where a boar was lying in the long gra.s.s, and that he would take me to the spot if I would accompany him. We started off together, and on getting well into the wood we went on our hands and knees, crawling under the trees and brushwood, towards the spot where the boar was supposed to be. We had to keep quite close together. I carried round my neck a very pretty silver whistle, which I prized exceedingly. Suddenly, when we were in a very thick part of the bush, the Arab seized hold of my whistle and held it tight. I immediately grasped the hand that held the whistle; this I did with my right hand holding his left. He, with his right hand, tried to draw a knife. I, with my left, tried to get my gun to bear on him, but there was so little room to spare on account of the thick bush that both our operations were difficult of performance. As soon as I saw him trying to draw a knife, I dropped the hand with the whistle, and seized that with which he tried to draw the knife. Thus the play went on for two or three minutes; neither of us spoke, all our energies were directed on our different games. At last, by turning round a little, I succeeded in giving him a tremendous kick, which rolled him over on his back; then my gun was free, and I held it to his head, upon which he took an att.i.tude of supplication on his knees, and prayed for quarter. I made him give me his knife, go on all-fours again, and creep before me out of the wood.
This was a most audacious attempt at petty robbery. I should like to have peppered him a little, but he was so penitent, I decided to let him go. I don"t think he meant to stab me; I think he merely wanted to cut the string that held the whistle. These men were not generally murderers. On this trip we killed twelve pigs, a hundred and seven francolin, one lynx, and lots of c.o.c.k and ducks. Coming back to the ship I, and those with me in my boat, very nearly came to utter grief. There was a good deal of sea on the bar of the river. The cutter that was with me got over all safe, but my whale-boat being loaded heavily with pigs, &c., refused to rise with the waves, and not doing so, the consequences were that she filled and capsized. We had all to jump and make for the sh.o.r.e, a distance of nearly a mile, being in the greatest danger while doing so of getting into the current of the river. Any one who had done this must have been washed away and drowned; however, thank goodness, all hands were saved. The whale-boat was afterwards picked up, having been washed out to sea, but we lost all tents, spare guns, &c.; the pigs remained in the boat, as they were stowed under the thwarts, and hadn"t room to float out; so, friends, take warning of the bar of the Jihoon river.
It was about this time that I received a report from some American missionaries to the effect that one of their comrades had been robbed and murdered by some Arabs who inhabited the mountains near Alexandretta, people whose evil deeds had for some time past brought them into notoriety. Although I was under orders to join the commander-in-chief, I took it upon myself to remain and a.s.sist the Americans in hunting down if possible the murderers of their comrade.
I confess I was made more zealous in the cause from hearing that there were "lots of big game on the hills." I invited two or three of these American missionaries to join my mess, and off we went to look for the murderers. As this is a chapter on shooting, I will as briefly as possible state what we did in the official way. In the first place we anch.o.r.ed at the head of the Gulf of Ayas, near a large town where resided the chief authority of the neighbourhood in which the murder had been committed. I landed with the missionaries, several of my officers, and some marines to act as an escort, and paid an official visit to this gentleman, who was called the caimakam, or chief magistrate. This great man told us that we should certainly with his a.s.sistance find the people we were after. He suggested that we should accompany him with a small body of our men, to which he could add some of his zeptiehs: that thus accompanied he would go to a place on the hill where we should find what we wanted. He said that a little "backsheesh" was necessary. This latter we found, and the next day we started.
We ascended amongst the most magnificent wooded hills I ever saw. "Such places for game!" thought I, till at last we halted at a clump of splendid oak trees. Under one of these a grand luncheon was spread, of which we were all invited to partake. During the luncheon a man rushed up to our host and whispered in his ear something which seemed to give him great satisfaction, for he at once smilingly said, "Captain, I have found the men you are after;" and sure enough we saw approaching two ruffianly looking fellows, tied together, and being dragged along by men on horseback. I hope they were the right men. I will presume that they were, but they had been very quick in catching them. After my missionary friend who spoke their language had interrogated the prisoners, he requested that they might be kept apart, which was done, and they were given in charge of separate sentinels, to whose horses they were tied.
We then returned to our lunch, our pipes, and our coffee. Suddenly we heard a pistol shot, a rush, and a scream from the neighbourhood of the prisoners. It seems that one of them had drawn the pistol from his guardian"s belt, shot him dead, jumped on to the horse, and galloped off. Everybody, marines and all, tried to follow. Such a row never was heard; but the man knew the country, and we saw him no more. I was rather glad, for he must have been a plucky fellow.
The other prisoner was doubly secured and taken down to the village. He was afterwards hanged, so justice was satisfied and my work finished. I got a letter of thanks from the President of the United States, of which I was and am still very proud, and meant to have used had blockade-running brought me to grief.
This business being satisfactorily concluded, I asked my friend the caimakam if there was any big game to be had. His answer was, "Chok au Va," which meant there was plenty: and he undertook to beat the neighbouring woods that very day with his men. We were told that there were plenty of roe deer, foxes, jackals, &c., so we loaded our guns with S.S.G. cartridges (which means, I may tell it to the uninitiated, buck-shot). We were stationed on the outskirts of a splendid oak wood that looked like holding any mortal thing in the way of game. Soon as the beaters set to work c.o.c.ks began to fly about in all directions, but we had an instinct that something more important would turn up, so took no notice of feathered game. I was watching close, trying to look through almost impenetrable brushwood, when I heard a rustling sort of noise near me, and suddenly I caught sight of something which almost made my hair stand on end--a great tiger leopard, creeping, stealthily as a cat, out of the wood, within twenty yards of where I was standing.
Fortunately he did not look my way. What was I to do? My gun, as I said, was loaded with buck-shot; a miss or a wound would have been sure to bring the brute on top of me. However, I did not hesitate more than a couple of seconds; I pointed my gun at his heart just behind the shoulder, and pulled the trigger. The whole charge went straight where I pointed it, and the tiger rolled over on his back. I put a ball into my gun and approached him very gingerly. When I got close to him I found he hadn"t a kick in him. His claws were crunched up as if grasping something, his grand eyes were growing dim, and though, to make all sure, I fired a ball into his head, it was not necessary, as I found nine buckshot in the heart. He was a splendid beast, eleven feet from tip of tail to end of nose. It was said that he had killed a shepherd some days before, so he deserved his fate.
Before returning to the ship that evening, we arranged that the Arabs should turn out the next day to drive the covers on the beach near the ship, which were supposed to hold deer and pigs. I must mention that these Arabs are very different to the wandering tribes we had lately been amongst; they are warlike, unscrupulous, and dishonest. We made an arrangement with them that _all_ game killed should belong to us, the beaters being paid in gunpowder, which they prized very much. The Arabs thought we should only find pig, and as Mussulmen won"t touch it, the bargain was considered satisfactory to both parties.