THE PINJIH RHINO. 35 



might not be for some time that we found that we 

 were on old tracks and must turn back. Traces of 

 blood were extremely scanty, and it was only from 

 time to time that one or the other of us would 

 silently point to a single drop of clotted blood on 

 a leaf or twig. The difficulty, too, and the physical 

 exertion of moving in silence through the thick vege- 

 tation of the forest, must be undergone to be fully 

 realised. While one hand is perhaps disengaging a 

 thorny creeper from the shoulder, the other hand 

 holding a heavy rifle, and one foot suspended in the 

 air to avoid some crackling leaf, every muscle of the 

 body is called upon to maintain the equilibrium. 

 Moving thus in silence, we saw in the forest animals 

 that would otherwise have been alarmed long before 

 we came in sight. Mouse-deer repeatedly allowed us 

 to approach within a few feet of them ; twice we got 

 among a sounder of sleeping pig before they awoke ; 

 and once an agitated tapir dashed across the track 

 only a few yards away from me. A danger, how- 

 ever, there is of this silence. Malias and I had 

 followed a wrong track for a few yards before we 

 discovered our mistake ; retracing our footsteps, we 

 saw that beside the path lay a green puff-adder coiled 

 and ready to strike, and that each of us had un- 

 wittingly set his foot down within six inches of its 

 head. It was slowly thus that we made our way, 

 and it was past one o'clock on an intensely hot 

 day that we came up with the rhinoceros again. I 

 then saw him some thirty yards away standing 

 broadside on to us. His head was hidden by foliage, 

 and it was impossible to say at which end of the 



