82 RIFLE AND ROMANCE 



against a little twig. It is a huge boar, with grizzled grey 

 chaps and tushes gleaming white, twenty-five yards away. 

 If we can hit this target, we should be tolerably certain 

 of a bear under similar circumstances. In the lying 

 position, therefore, on the short sward, the night sight is 

 brought to bear on its forehead. Just at that- instant the 

 boar throws up his head and seems to be gazing intently 

 in our direction but it is too late ; there is a long, 

 yellow spurt of flame from the heavy cordite rifle, and 

 the thud of the explosion travels reverberating along the 

 line of wooded terraces. Ere its echoes have died away, 

 an intermittent spasmodic kicking is going on close to the 

 right of the bush, where some black object is seen to be 

 stretched out. Still we lie prone. A charging boar by 

 moonlight is not an easy matter to stop ! The kicking 

 grows feebler. We rise, and reloading, go slowly forward. 

 As we thought, it is a huge mountain boar, a hoary 

 patriarch, bearing testimony to the high feeding of these 

 cool and fertile plateaux. His lower tushes project three 

 and a half inches from the jaw ; there will be quite five to 

 six inches more of ivory embedded in its bony matrix. 



And there is the mark of the bullet just above the eye! 

 With this mountain of flesh we shall make great friends 

 with the Korkus ; while with the shot has been gained a 

 sense of confidence that we can bring off a bull's-eye by the 

 light of the moon. Otherwise it seems a shameful murder, 

 even although the nearest rideable country be thirty miles 

 away. Poor old boar ! 



Standing there it seems as though no rude shot had 

 ever been fired ; the jungle is as it was, the night birds as 

 wakeful, the stillness as unbroken and undisturbed. 



The season is late April not much fruit at this par- 

 ticular season in the jungle and the mhowa must have 

 ceased dropping its sickly flowers long since. Yet we 

 remember having noted one or two trees of bare appear- 

 ance and leafless a sign that all their flowers have not 



