304 LARGE GAME. chap. vi. 



unusually hot day, I decided to do the former. It we 

 lucky that I did so, for their spoor almost immediat 

 entered some bushes which hned an old dry water- coui 

 the thickness of which I knew by experience, and m^ 

 which I did not think it advisable to take the native, 

 who was evidently afraid, and might by some involuntary 

 start rouse the animals. 



After going about two hundred yards I distinguished 

 something tawny through the darkness of the jungle, and 

 on placing my foot on the lower branch of a tree which 

 stood convenient, I saw the two lying within a few feet 

 of each other, one of them, laid flat on its side with out- 

 stretched limbs, bemg in full view. It was a most tempt- 

 ing shot, and I only wished they had been a pair of 

 lions, so taking a steady aim at the exposed one, I pulled 

 the trigger, and the instant after I did so, the one at 

 which I had not fired bounded under the tree and stood 

 listening, evidently not knowing where the sound that 

 had disturbed it came from. A second afterwards it was 

 staggering away, shot through the lungs and with a 

 broken shoulder, while I, getting down, went to look after 

 the first. I found that it had hardly moved, and was 

 lying quite dead in almost the same spot in which it had 

 been asleep, my ball having fortunately — for such a shot 

 can never be anything more than a " fluke," — smashed its 

 spine, and caused all but instant death ; and when, after 

 loading, I followed the wounded one, I found i ' in scarcely 

 a better plight, lying beneath a bush unable to rise, but 

 as it stiU breathed I had to shoot it agam. 



The common leopards, i.e. the two locally known 

 under the name of ingwe, are much to be dreaded 



