HUNTING THE JAGUAR 63 



rufus) standing at the water's edge with all his 

 senses tense, looking straight at us, and inves- 

 tigating with eye, ear and nostril our strange ap- 

 pearance. I hesitated to shoot he looked such 

 a picture but then there was the old meat ques- 

 tion to take care of. The rifle spoke out, but it 

 was apparently too late, for the shot and his 

 bound seemed simultaneous, and with one grace- 

 ful spring he completely disappeared. On 

 returning to camp I found John Charley had 

 been out to reconnoiter on his own hook, and with 

 his unerring arrow had brought down a fine deer, 

 and also brought in alive a little fawn; but just 

 how he caught this little fellow I never quite 

 understood. His explanation was, "I just run 

 quick and pick him up so." Needless to say, 

 for dinner we had deer meat, although it was a 

 little too fresh to be real good. 



As I lay in my hammock that evening formu- 

 lating plans for the next day, I could not help 

 taking note of the many strange sounds and 

 voices that rose up out of the forests, as the 

 shades of night came drifting down. First there 

 came the hum and droning of myriads of insects ; 

 then as these died away the air quivered and 

 thrilled with the drowsy murmurings of birds as 

 they flew home from their feeding grounds to 



