d see
the herd fairly on our course, three hundred yards away.

Kublai Khan braced himself like a polo pony when he felt the
pressure of my knees, and I opened fire almost under his nose. At
the crack of the rifle there was a spurt of brown dust near the
leading animal. "High and to the left," shouted Yvette, and I held a
little lower for the second trial. The antelope dropped like a piece
of white paper, shot through the neck. I paced the distance and
found it to be three hundred and sixty-seven yards. It seemed a very
long shot then, but later I found that almost none of my antelope
were killed at less than three hundred yards.

As I came up to Kublai Khan with the dead animal, I accidentally
struck him on the flank with my rifle in such a way that he was
badly frightened. He galloped off, and Yvette had a hard chase
before he finally allowed her to catch him. Had I been alone I
should probably have had a long walk to camp.

It taught us never to hunt without a companion, if it could possibly
be avoided. If your horse runs away, you may be left many miles from
water, with rather serious consequences. I think there is nothing
which makes me feel more helpless than to be alone on the plains
without a horse. For miles and miles there is only the rolling
grassland or the wide sweep of desert, with never a house or tree to
break the low horizon. It seems so futile to walk, your own legs
carry you so slowly and such a pitifully short distance, in these
vast spaces.

To be left alone in a small boat on the open sea is exactly similar.
You feel so very, very small and you realize then what an
insignificant part of nature you really are. I have felt it, too,
amid vast mountains when I have been toiling up a peak which
stretched thousands of feet above me with others rearing their
majestic forms on every side. Then, nature seems almost alive and
full of menace; something to be fought and conquered by brain and
will.

Early in our work upon the plains we learned how easy it is to lose
one's way. The vast sea of land seems absolutely flat, but in
reality it is a gently rolling surface full of slopes and hollows,
every one of which looks exactly like the others. But after a time
we developed a _land sense_. The Mongols all have it to an
extraordinary degree. We could drop an antelope on the plain and
leave it for an hour or more. With a quick glance about our lama
would fix the place in his mind, and dash off on a chase wh