We knew there was no one else shooting there, and it 

 puzzled us considerably to think what had scared the 

 bushbuck ; for the animal had certainly been startled 

 and perhaps chased ; the pace, the noise it made, and 

 the blind recklessness of its dash, all showed that. 

 The only explanation we could think of was that the 

 tiger, in making a circuit along the slopes of the Berg 

 s ' to get away from us, must have put the buck up and 

 driven it down on to us in the woods below, and if 

 that were so, the reports of our rifles must have made 

 him think that he was never going to get rid of us. 



We skinned and cut up the buck and pushed on 

 again ; but the roughness of the trail and the various 

 stoppages had delayed us greatly, and we failed to get 

 the expected bag. We got one rietbuck and a young 

 boar ; the rietbuck was a dead shot ; but the pig, 

 from the shooting standpoint, was a most humiliating 

 failure. A troop of twenty or thirty started up from 

 under our feet as we came out of the blazing sunlight 

 into the gloom of the woods, and no one could see 

 well enough to aim. They were led by a grand boar, 

 and the whole lot looked like a troop of charging 

 lions as they raced by with their bristly manes erect 

 and their tufted tails standing straight up. 



As we stood there, crestfallen and disgusted, we heard 

 fresh grunting behind, and turning round we saw 

 one pig racing past in the open, having apparently 

 missed the troop while wallowing in a mudhole and 

 known nothing of our intrusion until he heard the 

 shooting. We gave him a regular broadside, and 

 as is usually the case when you think that quantity 



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