IN THE SWAMPS 185 



The jungle patches were never of great size, so I 

 could hear the beaters almost from their first shout 

 on entering the cover. Such a racket and such a 

 crew! for the beaters were as motley as the dogs. 

 They included Chinamen, Klings, Tamils, Japa- 

 nese, a few Malays, all of them naked except for 

 a small breech-clout. Every man had a parang 

 (jungle knife) swung at his waist; half of them 

 had empty, five-gallon kerosene cans, with which 

 Aboo Din had provided them on the coast. From 

 the moment they entered the far side of the cover 

 until they emerged on my side they hammered 

 these cans incessantly, shouting and yelling and at 

 the same time threshing the jungle on all sides with 

 bamboo sticks. Such a confusion of shrieking 

 man and crashing cans and yelping dogs I never 

 heard. As they came closer the noise became an 

 indescribable babel. There was never a day that 

 did not result in pigs ; they had to flee before that 

 bedlam, though none had tusks longer than a 

 couple of inches. It was a question of snap shoot- 

 ing as they popped out of one patch of jungle into 

 another; and was, I must say, rather good fun, 

 especially when the charge of two wounded ones 

 rather stirred things up a bit. 



But Aboo Din all the time maintained a dignified 

 aloofness. 



