"RIDING A PANTHER" 



carrying my hog-spear — of trying my hand at spearing a 

 panther off horseback. 



Telling the man to follow me, I started after the beast 

 at once at racing speed, for the distance was short, and I 

 knew that if he reached the hill before me I was done. 

 Fortunately, my horse being as fast as he was plucky, 

 we won, and I was about to lower the spear for a thrust 

 when the panther, now scarcely his length in front of me, 

 stopped suddenly and crouched. 



Going at the pace we were, I had neither time to check 

 my speed nor to drop the point of my spear, which, as we 

 flashed past him, merely glanced harmlessly over the 

 panther's back, and before I could pull up and wheel round, 

 the beast had reached some rocks, where it was impossible 

 to follow him. 



Meanwhile my orderly, having come to grief over a dry 

 watercourse, had had a nasty fall, the horse rolling over 

 him. He was accordingly literally hors de combat, and had 

 been so for some time. I was greatly disappointed at 

 not getting the panther, at the same time I quite realized 

 that he had come very near to getting me instead, for 

 crouched as he was all ready for a spring, had I wounded 

 him in passing, he would certainly have sprung on to 

 me. 



The panther, always a dangerous animal, is never more 

 so tlian when crouching, for its hind legs, being then doubled 

 up beneath it, act like springs under compression, it can 

 bound from this position in a second, and to a distance 

 almost inconceivable in an animal of its size and weight. 

 Then again, to inflict a fatal wound on a panther with a 

 spear from horseback, is not so easy, for the skin fits so 

 loosely that unless the thrust is delivered absolutely at 

 right angles to the body, which is seldom possible, the 

 point of the spear, instead of penetrating the flesh, will 

 often pass between it and the skin, thus inflicting a 

 painful, but not necessarily a fatal or even incapacitating 

 wound. 



Thus it will be seen that spearing panthers from horse- 

 back is, on the whole, a dangerous form of sport. At any 

 rate, it is one in which the hunter and the hunted arc more 

 equally matched than in any other contest between if^f^n 



^* 69 



