132 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



looking just as Boer farmers ought to look who had been 

 through a war and had ever since led the adventurous life 

 of frontier farmers in wild regions. They were accom- 

 panied by a pack of big, rough-looking dogs, but were 

 on foot, walking with long and easy strides. The dogs 

 looked a rough-and-ready lot, but on this particular morn- 

 ing showed themselves of little use; at any rate they put 

 up nothing. 



But Kermit had a bit of deserved good luck. While 

 the main body of us went down the river-bed, he and Mc- 

 Millan, with a few natives, beat up a side ravine, down 

 the middle of which ran the usual dry watercourse fringed 

 with patches of brush. In one of these they put up a leop- 

 ard, and saw it slinking forward ahead of them through 

 the bushes. Then they lost sight of it, and came to the con- 

 clusion that it was in a large thicket. So Kermit went on 

 one side of it and McMillan on the other, and the beaters 

 approached to try and get the leopard out. Of course none 

 of the beaters had guns; their function was merely to make 

 a disturbance and rouse the game, and they were cautioned 

 on no account to get into danger. But the leopard did not 

 wait to be driven. Without any warning, out he came and 

 charged straight at Kermit, who stopped him when he was 

 but six yards off with a bullet in the forepart of the body; 

 the leopard turned, and as he galloped back Kermit hit him 

 again, crippling him in the hips. The wounds were fatal, 

 and they would have knocked the fight out of any animal 

 less plucky and savage than the leopard; but not even in 

 Africa is there a beast of more unflinching courage than 

 this spotted cat. The beaters were much excited by the 

 sight of the charge and the way in which it was stopped, 

 and they pressed jubilantly forward, too heedlessly; one 

 of them, who was on McMillan's side of the thicket, went 

 too near it, and out came the wounded leopard at him. 

 It was badly crippled or it would have got the beater at 

 once; as it was, it was slowly overtaking him as he ran 

 through the tall grass, when McMillan, standing on an 



