SPOTTED DEER. 263 



made off at speed with flashing skuts, but a stag, moved by 

 curiosity, lingered behind to stare at me, nose in air and 

 antlers laid over his back. Being suitably dressed and the 

 wind blowing across us the handsome beast could make 

 nothing of me, as I stood stock still, and partially concealed 

 by the brushwood, and thus he gave me a fair shot at eighty 

 paces at his white thick throat which showed above the covert. 

 The report of the 12-bore rifle perhaps the first ever echoed 

 by those woods was succeeded by a slight rustle of leaves, 

 and then all was still. My gun-bearer, who had crawled up 

 behind, whispered his opinion that I had missed and the stag 

 was off, but the dull thud of the bullet had caught my ear, 

 so that on walking up to where he had stood, a noble stag 

 was found stone dead, shot through the throat and the vertebra 

 of the neck. Leaving him where he fell, well covered with 

 branches of trees, we walked round the opening putting up 

 many deer, seeing one now and then for an instant, and 

 wounding, without bagging, a second stag ; and thus we once 

 more returned to the open beach, having observed the foot- 

 prints of tigers thickly dented in the muddy paths which 

 intersected the thickets in all directions, but without remarks 

 thereon we pursued our silent way with increased caution. 



On regaining the sands we turned again to the left and 

 walked along them, now nearly covered by the rising tide, 

 for a full mile without meeting with anything worthy of 

 note, except the dried and blackened skin and bones of a 

 hammer-headed shark, eleven feet in length by my measuring 

 tape a strange and uncouth monster, which must have been 

 cast up by the sea some days before, after having been 

 wounded unto death by some other mightier than he. 



Another mile got over we came upon a second opening 

 in the woods similar to the last, but far larger, and extending 

 to nearly a mile inland. On entering the scrub a sounder of 

 hog rose suddenly almost at our feet, and scuttled off before 

 us in terrible alarm ; and following upon their tracks we pre- 

 sently came out of the low jungle and found ourselves on the 

 margin of a park-like expanse, surrounded by deep woods 



