THE VENGEANCE OF THE WILD 261 



for him, for as soon as he came within thirty 

 yards of it, the brute charged straight at him. 

 In this desperate pass, and without time to take 

 deliberate aim, Mr. Van der Byl fired full in its 

 face, with the lucky result alluded to above. 

 Nextmoment the leopard seized him and bit him 

 badly, when one of his native servants ran up 

 and pluckily killed it with an axe. Had the long 

 teeth not been knocked out of either jaw, the 

 leopard would have bitten fatally. From this 

 and other experiences, Mr. Van der Byl has 

 arrived at the opinion that a wounded leopard 

 is even more likely to charge than most beasts. 

 Bears are not the most dangerous brutes in 

 the wilderness, but a wounded " sloth " bear 

 sometimes comes rolling downhill on its enemy 

 at an extraordinary pace and inflicts dreadful 

 face-wounds with its teeth and claws. Many 

 of the jungle-men in parts of India bear elo- 

 quent testimony to its savagery. General 

 Kinloch told me a story of one of these 

 bears killing an officer in the R.A. and a 

 forest officer, and General Gatacre mentioned 

 that Mr. Neave, of the Indian Civil Service, 

 was so badly mauled by one many years ago 

 that he too died of his wounds. The grizzly 

 bear is the fiercest and most dreaded of all the 

 tribe, which is not surprising when we remem- 

 ber that it can still charge and kill a man even 

 after it has been shot through the heart. Mr. 



