Page:A Summer Ramble in the Himalayas; with Sporting Adventures in the Vale of Cashmere.djvu/63

Rh and a shot fired into the hole, brought no response, while no one was bold enough to venture into the cave. I had, a few days before, in one of the villages we passed through, seen a man with his face terribly mangled by a bear, and the recollection of this did not tend to make me ambitious of attacking a wounded one in a dark cave. I was thinking of trying smoke, when one of the men, who was peering about the mass of rock, said he could see the bear through a small crevice. On looking, at first I could see nothing, but at length made out a mass of black fur, at which I fired, though it was impossible to form any idea to what part of the animal it belonged, but I expected it would either kill or cause the beast to bolt out, in which case I had the second barrel to deliver at a few paces. All remained quiet, and when the smoke cleared away, on looking again through the crevice, there was the black fur still in the same place. He must be dead, I exclaimed; and cutting a long stick, we poked at the fur for some time, till certain of the fact. With some difficulty we managed to drag him out, and I had the pleasure of turning over the first bear I had ever shot. He must have been dead some time, for the jaws were fixed and rigid. The first ball had, as I thought, hit him right in the shoulder, and ought to have killed him dead, or at least prevented him coming such a distance, but the bruin tribe are very tenacious of life, and the best shot can never calculate on dropping one like a rabbit.