Sport in the Plains 



this would have been unbearable but for the 

 interest now aroused by the sounds of the ever- 

 lasting nightly hunt of the carnivora after the 

 more harmless denizens of the jungle a hunt 

 that taxes all the resources and endurance of 

 the latter from the time they are first able 

 to relieve their mothers of the responsibility of 

 their existence till the inevitable moment when 

 old age, disablement or over-confidence betrays 

 them to their relentless foes. This night some 

 chattering monkeys first broke the stillness in the 

 distance, and presently the cause of their anxiety 

 was heard, a deep note not altogether unlike the 

 lowing of an ox a leopard was hunting. I have 

 heard lions and leopards give tongue at night, but 

 the tiger, I believe, always hunts in silence. I have 

 never seen any explanation of this, but suppose 

 each adopts the method that generations of 

 experience have taught them, and that while the 

 tiger trusts entirely to his wonderful stealth, 

 craft, and to his lightning-like final rush, 

 the others must petrify their quarry by their 

 awful voices, much as a rabbit seems unable to 

 move his limbs when in danger from a stoat. 

 Presently sounds were heard again in another 

 direction: the startled voice of a cheetal, then 

 nearer the bark of a karkur deer, and then I can 

 just hear a sound like a very heavy man advancing 

 with a long pause after each step over the dead 



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