170 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 



taste for mutton from opportunity, for before 

 such food was to be had on the veldt they 

 must have been content with carrion. These 

 hideous ghouls always gather in the wake of 

 retreating armies. Large numbers appeared 

 along the line of march when the forces of the 

 Mad Mullah were retiring before our cara- 

 vans, and when the bloodthirsty Zulu chief, 

 Chaha, had in the course of his depreda- 

 tions, laid waste vast areas of South Africa, 

 hyenas simply swarmed over the battlefields 

 and feasted on the naked dead. In the ordin- 

 ary way, hyenas are creatures of darkness, but 

 they are sometimes seen abroad during the 

 day. Major Kennard once witnessed a terrific 

 battle between two striped hyenas in India, in 

 a nullah not far from Muttra. So occupied 

 were the combatants with each other that they 

 took no notice whatever of him, so he shot one 

 of them dead. Then the other began to worry 

 it, and he shot that as well. This curious 

 failure of instinct is very common in wild 

 animals that fight in presence of man and 

 allow themselves to be shot rather than take 

 the more sensible course of forgetting their 

 quarrel for the moment and escaping from the 

 common danger so as to fight it out in safety 

 another day. The case of duelling stags is 

 a familiar one, and many a fight to the death 

 has been witnessed by keepers in the High- 



