152 Leaves from an Indian Jungle. 



I was proceeding carelessly up one side of a little knoll, 

 on the far side of which toiled the men, when the sharp crack 

 of a twig caused me to glance up, and there, almost per- 

 pendicularly above me, and not sixty yards off, stood a 

 monster stag horns laid back, mane bristling, and tail 

 standing stiffly out ! His vital parts were protected, more 

 or less, however, by a maze of branches, the smallest of 

 which might have turned a bullet, and next moment he was 

 off at a lumbering canter : a snapshot was fired at him as 

 he burst across an open space, and a despairing left barrel 

 loosed as the huge black back and yellow rump disappeared 

 with a lurch over the sky-line. 



Shoving in fresh cartridges, I tore up after him (as he must 

 cross a certain large open space of grass ere gaining the 

 forest beyond), and looked in vain for his dark shape, which 

 ought now to be crossing the grass ; but he had vanished. 

 Moreover, no sound of his retreat could be heard in the 

 coppices to right or left. We were just going to examine 

 the ground for blood, when, close in front, a great horn 

 tossed in the spear-grass, and a choking gasp announced 

 my good fortune at last. 



The Korkus would have it that this was our old twice-met 

 friend. If so, then there was certainly luck the third time. 



He was a very old and mangy fellow, with long and half 

 healed gashes over his brave old front, and one of his 

 brow tines had been broken near the tip in the late rut- 

 ting season's encounters. My extremely lucky last shot 

 had caught him far back and high up; but the liver shot is 

 scarcely less quickly fatal than a bullet through the heart, 

 and he had never reached the covert he had sought. 



The quivering of an eyelid was sufficient to satisfy my 

 orderly's conscience as, with a muttered " Bismillah tltehu 

 Akbar ! " the knife completed the ceremony of hallaL. 



