SOME OLD HORSES. 49 



with whom to fight the battles o'er again, and my aching 

 arms, after killing four, five, or six boars in the morning, 

 off hard-pulling Arabs, used to raise regrets at the absence 

 of at least one old comrade. 



I had once an Arab, a trifle under fourteen hands, who 

 always insisted upon his own way of running down his 

 pig, and who (I will not write of him as " which," for he was 

 as intelligent as a native B.A.), used to course it as a grey- 

 hound does a hare, turning, twisting, and wheeling round 

 after delivery of a thrust, as if all he asked was that 

 his rider should handle his spear properly while he did the 

 hunting. Mounted on this little self-willed and hard-mouthed 

 hero, when a fleet and jinking boar was before us, and the 

 country was rough, or much intersected by blind ditches and 

 water- courses, my arms used to become numb, and all the 

 breath pumped out of my body before the final spear was 

 delivered ; and then, as I sprung off his back to loosen the 

 girths, he would look up at me, after a sniff or two at our 

 prostrate foe, as much as to say, " Did I not do that hand- 

 somely ? " 



Another, and a far more trying horse, was a well-bred 

 Tasmanian, with a mouth as sensitive as the conscience of 

 an Accountant-General, whose notion of hunting was to go 

 straight forward, nose up in the air, and the bit between his 

 teeth, as regardless of the animal hunted as of the trees and 

 bushes he passed. That grievous charger brought me to 

 terrible grief more than once when hunting alone, and might 

 have been warranted safely to break any square, unless shot 

 down (as his stupidity and obstinacy fully deserved). A 

 casual acquaintance, who took a fancy for him, relieved me 

 of his company, to my great satisfaction, for he was too 

 valuable in many respects to be parted with at the cost of a 

 charge of shot. I forget now how many heads, arms, and legs 

 he broke before and after he adorned my stud; but they w^ere 

 not a few, and he did his best to throw mine also into the 

 list ; the blundering, hard-mouthed beast ! 



Still there were two other horses calling me master which 

 E 



