152 RIDING, DRIVING AND KINDRED SPORTS 



lower jaw, so that about three or four inches 

 protrude, are a very important instrument to the 

 boar. 



As long as the boar can keep with the sounder, 

 the tushes are kept as sharp as razors, and are 

 capable of inflicting- a tremendous cut. Two 

 examples of their sharpness, which I am not 

 likely to forget, occur to me as I write. In the 

 first case we had started a sounder, in which 

 was one rideable boar, a fine, active, dark- 

 coated one, with good tushes for his age, as 

 white as the ivory handle of a new razor, and 

 as sharp as its blade. One of my companions 

 beat me in the race for the first spear, but the 

 boar, turning away from the spear as they 

 often will, let me in. There was a small 

 patch of jungle, for which piggy made a most 

 tremendous spurt, and he entered a few yards 

 in front of me, going along a cattle trodden 

 path. I knew the covert was a small one, and 

 thinking that he would certainly go through, 

 I rode in to get a view of him as he broke. 

 Instead of this he waited, as a wounded pig will 

 often do, and charged out at me as I galloped 

 past. The attack was so sudden that I barely 

 had time to lower the spear I was using, a 

 long Bombay one, and the blade turned off 

 along his back as he went past me. It was all 

 over in a flash, and it was not till I felt the 



