IN THE EYE OF DAY 199 



dang have been killed with comparative small bore 

 weapons— I was fortunate enough to kill one with 

 a 50 calibre— but it is also true that the late Cap- 

 tain Syres, one of the most experienced sportsmen 

 among English residents of Malay, was killed by 

 the charge of a seladang, after he and his com- 

 panion had put six .577 balls into the beast. As 

 he lay wounded to the death Captain Syres charged 

 his companion never to go into the Malayan jungle 

 for seladang with any weapon lighter than an 

 8 bore; and though perhaps that is erring on the 

 safe side, certainly if error is to be made the safe 

 side is the one which wisdom would choose. In a 

 sense this is true of all shooting in the dense jun- 

 gles of the Par East, which do not afford the more 

 or less open stretches of India or the plains of 

 Africa. Dangerous game is apt to come at you 

 from such near points, and the kind of shooting 

 demanded is so much of the snap work variety, that 

 picking your shot, as a rule, is impossible. You 

 must have a gun that will stop, or at least turn 

 aside, the infuriated charging animal; and in the 

 case of seladang it is your life or his. Therefore 

 you must have smashing, sickening power in your 

 cartridge, not merely penetration. And when you 

 are tracking a wounded seladang, look well that 

 you do not become entangled in the vines and the 

 clinging growths of many descriptions that en- 



