ADVENTURES IN CAMP AND JUNGLE. 95 



vain. The beaters came up and advanced with fiendish yells, 

 blowing horns and beating drums. Stones were showered into 

 the bush, and a sharp fire of blank cartridge was kept up by 

 a party of the Guzerat Kolee corps who had accompanied us. 

 The boar, however, knew the strength of his position, and 

 refused to show himself again in the open ground. He 

 might, of course, have been shot, but such a proceeding 

 would have been regarded in the same light as the shooting 

 of a fox in Leicestershire ; so as we could not in honour ride 

 away and leave him, it was agreed that we should dismount 

 and go in at him on foot with our spears. 



The project was a rash one, for though a spear is a handy 

 weapon when used from horseback in open ground, it is not 

 quite so suitable when going in at an infuriated boar in a 

 tangled thicket of thorns and long grass. We did not, however, 

 give this part of the matter much consideration. We were 

 about eight in number, and in the event of any one of us being 

 in difficulties we relied on our comrades. The boar had taken 

 his stand in the centre of the thicket, which was some fifty 

 yards across, and we moved slowly in on him, with our spears 

 shortened and pointed in advance. My greatest danger 

 seemed to be from my neighbour on the left, who, relinquish- 

 ing his spear, had armed himself with a sharp-pointed crooked 

 sword which he had taken from one of the beaters, and 

 which he held over his shoulder in painful proximity to my 

 countenance. 



Towards the centre of the thicket the ground was some- 

 what clearer, and most fortunately the boar selected the 

 moment at which we gained this spot to make his charge. 

 With savage grunts he came crashing down on us, and evi- 

 dently intended to make an ugly hole in some one, but we 

 stood steady, and the nearest spears were buried in his chest 



