66 THE TRIBES ON MY FRONTIER. 



those ears are, fit to catch the gentlest rustle of the feathers 

 of a dreaming sparrow. Another pair of little trumpets of 

 semi-transparent skin, like subordinate ears, rise from the 

 nose, to gather the faintest odour of the sleeping prey as it 

 floats past upon the air. To this extraordinary detective 

 apparatus the demon bat adds a pair of ample wings of the 

 softest vellum, on which it glides noiseless and ghostlike 

 among the trees, or up and down the verandah, under the 

 eaves of the roof. It scents a sparrow asleep, with its head 

 cosily buried in its wing. The sparrow has a dream, a dread- 

 ful dream ; it starts and raises its head and gives a piercing 

 shriek, and the curtain falls. The sparrow is now hanging 

 limp and lifeless from the jaws of the shadowy sped re, which 

 flits in at the window and up to its favourite hook. In the 

 morning two wings are lying beside the flower-vase upon the 

 table, and perhaps a beak, for though the demon bat eats the 

 head, skull and all, before any other part, it often leaves the 

 beak. If the hamal is up before his sahib in the morning, 

 he sweeps the remains away, and no one is a bit the wiser. 

 That a sparrow's wings should occur on the table docs not 

 strike him as a phenomenon requiring explanation, especially 

 if he found frogs' feet or a mouse's taii, or the remains of a 

 little bat, on the same spot the morning before. 



