my brain more rapidly than even the flight of the maddened red deer; and scarcely less swiftly, I began scrambling down the face of the cliff.  It was really a series of almost hopeless leaps to which I was committed, and the axe, to which I clung, rather impeded than aided me as I let myself drop from one rocky shelf to another, catching at the boughs and roots of trees to break my fall.  At last I reached the last ledge before the sheer wall of rock, which hung above the path.  As I let myself down, feeling with my feet for any shelf or crack in the wall, I heard the blare of the stags, and the rattle of the wheels.  Half intentionally, half against my will, I left my hold of a tree-root, and slid, bumping and scratching myself terribly, down the slippery and slatey face of the rocky wall, till I fell in a mass on the narrow road.  In a moment I was on my feet, the axe I had thrown in front of me, and I grasped it instinctively as I rose.  It was not too soon.  The deer were almost on me.  Stepping to the side of the way, where a rock gave some shelter, I dealt a blow at the nearest stag, under which he reeled and fell to the ground, his companion stumbling over him.  In the mad group of rearing beasts I smote right and left at the harness, which gave way beneath my strokes, and the unhurt stags sped down the glen, and then rushed into separate corries of the hills.  The car was upset, and Doto lay pale and bleeding among the hoofs of the stricken deer.