JUNGLE HUNTER 265 



hunted diligently every day of eight before we found 

 a section which gave indication of rhinoceros. Most 

 of those eight days it had rained, and the 8x12 

 canvas fly I carried came in very handy to save 

 provisions and protect our heads at night from the 

 almost incessant downpour. Several times I saw 

 the pugs of leopard, and one day, as, under a gen- 

 erous shade-giving bush, I sat writing in my note 

 book, while the main camp was being moved, I 

 had the unusual good fortune to see the end of a 

 stalk by a black leopard upon a barking deer. I 

 could easily have got a snap shot had my camera 

 been at hand instead of in its tin box, journeying 

 toward the new camp site, about ten miles away. 

 While I wrote I heard several barking deer with- 

 out looking up ; in fact they were so common that 

 I never did pay attention, except where there was 

 hope of getting near to study them ; but, as I wrote, 

 a strange and, it seemed, distressful yelp, caused 

 me to look up in time to see a deer just bounding 

 out from the jungle edge, with a black leopard not 

 two dozen feet behind. In two leaps the leopard 

 had reached the deer and sprung, seizing its neck 

 just back of the head with its jaws. The two 

 turned almost a somersault— and then the deer lay 

 quite still— its neck evidently broken. It hap- 

 pened in the open not fifty feet from me, and I 

 sat for a full ten minutes watching the first one 



