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.