74 TWO YEAKS IN THE JUNGLE. 



call a halt they were fully 300 yards away. I attempted to make 

 a brilliant shot at that distance, aiming at a fine buck, but my bul- 

 let struck the bank about three inches above the top of his shoul- 

 ders. Away they went again, and from a hill-top we marked their 

 course until they disappeared entirely. Then we started for them, 

 keeping well in the bottom of the ravines until we thought we 

 were near them. Getting upon the top of a ridge we went cau- 

 tiously forward, and very soon saw my identical buck cHmbing 

 out of a ravine about ninety yards in advance of us. Feeling sure 

 he would pause a moment at the top of the ridge to look for us, I 

 dropped quietly upon one knee, and covered him with my rifle. 

 Sure enough, as he reached the level he saw us and turned to look 

 for a second or two, when my bullet struck him full in the chest 

 and dropped him dead. It is the almost invariable habit of the 

 gazelle, unless startled suddenly at close range, to stare at the 

 hunter for two or three seconds before turning to run away, and 

 that instant of rest is the hunter's time to fii*e. As soon as the 

 buck feU, Wazir, who was a devout Mohammedan, ran forward with 

 a knife and cut its throat, exclaiming ' Bismillah ! ' (in the name 

 of God) while the animal was stiU alive, which rendered the flesh 

 eligible for the cooking-pots of aU true Moslems. This operation 

 is called ' hallal karna,' and no Mohammedan can eat the flesh of 

 any animal which has not been properly ' hallaled ' before Life 

 became extinct, by some true follower of the Prophet. During our 

 first two days' shooting, it somehow happened that not a single 

 animal was ' hallaled,' and so, although the camj^-followers had an 

 abundance of fresh meat for which the souls of Mohammedans 

 yearned and theu- mouths watered, not one of them touched a morsel 



" Shortly after the death of the buck, we saw a fine nil-gai or 

 'blue bull,' on the top of a little table-land nearly half a mile away, 

 and we took a good look at him through the glass for fear we might 

 never see him again. As he stood upon the summit of that high 

 ground, his dark body sharply outlined against the sky, he seemed 

 as large as our American moose, and he instantly reminded me of 

 that long-legged and ungainly animal. Yet this great lumbering 

 animal, perhaps four and a half feet high at the shoulders, with 

 eight^inch horns and tail nearly two feet long, is an antelope, one 

 of the largest of the antelope family. 



" As the nil-gai disappeared in the ravines, I started across the 

 succession of hills and hollows that lay between us, and in an in- 

 credibly short time reached the place where we last saw him. But 



