have hidden a more calculating spirit, it did not 

 trouble us the tiger was what we wanted ; the chance 

 IJlJseemed good enough ; and we decided to go. Tigers 

 ! as they are almost invariably called, but properly, 

 leopards were plentiful enough and were often to 

 be heard at night in the kloofs below ; but they are ex- 

 tremely wary animals and in the inhabited parts rarely 

 move about by day ; however, the marauding habits 

 and the audacity of this fellow were full of promise. 



The following afternoon we set off with our guns 

 and blankets, a little food for two days, and the tiger- 

 trap ; and by nightfall we had reached the foot of the 

 Berg by paths and ways which you might think only 

 a baboon could follow. 



It was moonlight, and we moved along through the 

 heavily-timbered kloofs in single file behind the 

 shadowy figure of the shrivelled old chief. His years 

 seemed no handicap to him, as with long easy soft- 

 footed strides he went on hour after hour. The air 

 was delightfully cool and sweet with the fresh smells 

 of the woods ; the damp carpet of moss and dead 

 leaves dulled the sound of our more blundering steps ; 

 now and again through the thick canopy of evergreens 

 we caught glimpses of the moon, and in odd places 

 the light threw stumps or rocks into quaint relief or 

 turned some tall bare trunk into a ghostly sentinel 

 of the forest. 



We had crossed the last of the many mountain 

 streams and reached open ground when the old chief 

 stopped, and pointing to the face of a high krans 

 black and threatening in the shadow, as it seemed 



252 



