98 IN MALAY FORESTS. 



longer, and any sudden alarm a squirrel's chatter or a 

 sudden meeting with a wild pig might send them 

 trotting into the safety and cover of the forest. On 

 the other hand, we had to move in perfect silence, 

 for every animal knows the risks to which the ex- 

 posure of the open plain subjects it, and is doubly 

 watchful. 



Even when one hacks a path, it is not easy to make 

 a way through the wild profusion and tangled thorny 

 growth of a Malay forest. But when one is tracking 

 one dares not use a knife, for the sound of the first 

 chop would give the alarm. It is bad enough to have 

 to crawl and creep and wriggle and struggle with 

 every obstacle that thorn and spike can offer, but that 

 is not all. Far from it. You see a bough barring 

 your way. In its present position it is too low to be 

 crawled under, too high to be stept over : you must 

 raise it slightly with your left hand and then insinuate 

 yourself underneath it. Your right hand holds your 

 heavy rifle. While you are in this strained attitude, 

 looking for a place where you can noiselessly set 

 down your right foot, you see that the bough is 

 covered with red ants, which ran down to it from 

 their nest on the parent tree the moment that your 

 touch communicated the alarm. Their little black 

 beady eyes gleam with fury, and their red mandibles 

 are open to their widest extent. They carry the after 

 part of their bodies high in the air, so that the slim 

 waist is strained almost into a right angle, and they 

 seem to writhe in a frenzied anticipation of the 

 moment when the time to bite will come. You cannot 

 draw back : you must go on, and you cannot afford to 



