WILD SPORT IN BRITTANY. 113 



agony ! Kergoorlas had not yet arrived j but St. Prix, standing 

 on the top of a boulder and listening to the murder, seemed 

 for a moment petrified with horror. Descending at a bound, 

 however, from this pedestal, he and a dozen peasants after him 

 at once rushed forwards, and clambering as they best could over 

 the huge fragments of granite that barred their course, they 

 soon gained the spot under which the fray was surging with a 

 terrible din. 



" He'll murder every hound of them," shouted St. Prix, seizing 

 his horn and blowing it like a madman ; but this taking no effect 

 upon the combatants, he quickly laid it down, and springing to 

 the base of the rocks, on the very brink of the river, he drew his 

 conteau, and was about to crawl, for he could not walk erect, into 

 the hollow chasm where the fight was going on. Keryfan seized 

 him by the arm, however, and with the timely aid of three or four 

 peasants dragged him forcibly back. " Stay, M. de St. Prix," said 

 one of them, " enter not there, or you'll rush to certain death. 

 Let us light a fire behind the boar ; and that, my word for it, will 

 unearth him at once." 



To this proposition he reluctantly gave way j and, in a few 

 minutes a pile of heather, fern, leaves, and dead wood were 

 dropped through a cranny exactly over the spot known to be the 

 far end of the cavern, and probably exactly upon the boar. Then 

 a whole box of lucifer matches was cast in a state of ignition right 

 into the heather, and in a few seconds a dense volume of smoke, 

 followed by a roaring flame, shot upwards. Instantly the rattling 

 of pebbles and a strange rumbling commotion was heard below ; 

 and, almost before a peasant could snatch up his gun, the huge, 

 swarthy beast burst out, and, dashing into the bed of the torrent, 

 swam straight for the opposite shore. Before he landed, how- 

 ever, the messengers of death were hard upon him. Pierced by 

 several shots at the same moment, he rolled a lifeless carcase on 

 the river's edge. His lower tusks were seven inches in length, 



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