94 THE HUNTING GROUNDS 



blows with the handle of my knife that I could pre- 

 vent them from tearing the flesh. At that moment 

 I was not sure whether I had not got hold of some 

 kind of chimpanzee or ourang-outang, and I shouted 



out lustily for help. M , the shekarries, and 



coolies soon got up into the tree, and with their 



assistance I di-agged up from a hoUow in the trunk 



two most extraordinary creatures in human shape. 



One was old and wrinkled, the other quite a child, 



and both belonged to the weaker sex, but whether 



of the genus ' man ' or ' monkey ' I was not at all 



sure. They were of a dark olive colour, and the 



tallest was nothing like four feet high. She just 



was a beauty, without a stitch of clothing except a 



piece of creeper tied round her hair to keep it out 



of her eyes, which were small and very piercing 



when she opened them, but she kept them shut, just 



taking a peep now and then like a frightened ape. 



She grunted very hard, and I saw a couple of tears 



rolling down her weather-beaten and wrinkled cheeks 



as the gang tied her by the leg to the root of the 



tree to prevent her running away. The child hung 



close to the mother, keeping its face hid in her lap, 



and I had a dog-chain passed round its ancle, and 



fastened with a padlock to a root also. We looked 



at them for a long time before we were quite sure 



whether they were human. I fancied at first that 



they were some kind of hybrid, for I never beheld 



such strange objects. The nose was nearly flat, the 



mouth most capacious, and full of large yellow teeth. 



