136 IN MALAY FORESTS. 



bare neck. My topi was plucked from my head and 

 flung into a thicket, but the hold upon my neck was 

 fast. It was useless to struggle : to have done so 

 would only have meant being caught by other fronds 

 that, with all the beauty of kittens at play, swayed 

 toward me with every movement that I made. 

 Keeping as still as I could, I had to lop off with 

 my knife such tendrils as I could reach, and then 

 endeavour to unhook myself from the grip of the 

 bands upon my neck and shoulder. And all the 

 time Malias, who did not see my plight, maddened 

 me with a senseless reiterated " Quick ! oh, be quick ! " 

 After a moment of desperate calm I freed myself, 

 and having paid toll in the form of a long tear in 

 the cloth covering of my topi and a row of little 

 jagged punctures on my neck, ran quickly forward. 

 We soon saw what had happened. The tapir, when 

 startled by us, had run for some twenty yards, and 

 then a steep ravine had interrupted the way. Down 

 this it had gone headlong. Saplings, rattans, creepers, 

 everything had given way before it ; for, luckily for 

 itself, it had not run into a tree of any size, and it 

 was only a thick tangled clump of rattans that, by 

 receiving the impact of the fall and by acting as a 

 buffer, had saved it from a broken neck. We got 

 to the bottom of the ravine as best we could, and 

 heard the tapir moving slowly, and apparently pain- 

 fully, in front of us not more than a hundred yards 

 away. It was quite hidden from sight. That ravine 

 contained as murderous-looking a mass of twisted 

 trees and knotted creepers as one could wish to see. 

 Every inch of stem and branch and twig of every 



