of the Old World. 99 



slightly wound the brute by firing in this way, so I 

 gave the black mass of hair a poke with the end of 

 the barrel of my gun in order to stir it up. Imagine 

 my astonishment when 1 saw the upper part of a 

 human face and a pair of eyes bob up and then go 

 down again I To hang my rifle on a broken branch 

 and whip out my shekar knife was the work of a 

 moment, and thus armed I clutched the supposed 



animal by the hair, and shouted to M and the 



rest to come up ; when the thing I was holding began 

 to moan and struggle, and shortly a curious kind of 

 paws, with huge claws, emerged from below and 

 fastened on my hand, and it was only by frequent 

 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 dragged up from a hollow 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 



H 2 



