imal fell over the cliff were only fifty
feet away, but they too were separated from it by a wall of rock and
surging water. They said that there was an easier way up the cliff than the
one by which we had descended, and prepared a line of tough vines, one end
of which they let down to us. We made it fast to the serow and I kept a
second vine rope in my hands, swimming beside the animal as they dragged it
to the other shore. It was landed safely and the wood cutter was hauled
over by the same means.

I had intended to swim back for my clothes but discovered that Achi had
disappeared, taking my garments and those of the wood cutter with him. He
evidently intended to meet us on the hilltop, but it left us in the rather
awkward predicament of making our way through the thick brush with only the
proverbial smile and minus even the necktie.

The men fastened together the serow's four legs, slipped a pole beneath
them and toiled up the steep slope preceded by a naked brown figure and
followed by a white one. The side of the gorge was covered with vines and
creepers, many of them thorny, and pushing through them with no bodily
protection was far from comfortable.

When we arrived at the road on the rim of the gorge I was dismayed to find
that Achi was not there with my clothes. The wood cutter did not appear to
be greatly worried and indicated that we would find him farther up the
road. I walked on dubiously, expecting every second to meet some person,
and sure enough, a Chinese woman suddenly appeared over a little hill. I
dived into the tall ferns beside the road, burrowing like a rabbit, and
from the frightened way in which she hurried past, she must have thought
she had seen one of her ancestral spirits stalking abroad. We eventually
found the boy, and, decently dressed, I faced the world again with
confidence and happiness.

On the way back to camp we saw a goral on the cliffs across the river. It
was high up and fully three hundred and fifty yards away but, of course,
quite unconscious of our presence. My first two shots struck close beside
the animal, but at the third it rolled over and over down the hill, lodging
among the rocks just above the river.

Our entry into camp was triumphal, for fully half the village acted as an
escort to the serow, an animal which few had ever seen. It was a female,
and probably weighed about two hundred and fifty pounds. The mane was short
and black and strikingly unlike the long whit