A BOBBERY PACK 55 



and how I longed for a few couples of good English otter- 

 hounds at that moment. On and on ran the gallant 

 animal, now on the level veld and now under the steep 

 bank of the narrow waterway, and those weasel-barrelled 

 Kafir hounds begin to press him, and the old Airedale 

 holds his own with the best of them. The spruit begins 

 to widen out and the quarry takes to the water, while 

 " hounds," puzzled by the sudden disappearance of their 

 game, come to a check, allowing Mervin and a few of 

 the field to come up with the remainder of the yapping 

 pack. 



" Stickle the stream below ! There he blows ! " cried 

 the leggy youngster, who came rushing towards Jack 

 and me, pointing to a volume of bubbles rising to the 

 surface from the depths of the turbid stream. The 

 leggy youth, a West Countryman and no novice at the 

 sport in hand, is right. The otter finds he has made a 

 mistake in leaving the main stream, and tries to double 

 back to it under cover of water. In a moment half-a- 

 dozen of us are up to our breasts in water, hand in hand, 

 and with our feet moving from side to side to stop the 

 otter's passage. 



The bobbery pack is now yapping all round us, some 

 on the bank and some in the water, amongst the latter 

 the three-legged spaniel. 



" Hieu gaze ! " holloas some one from the bank, as a 

 lot of bubbles rise to the surface not a dozen yards away. 

 " Begad ! he touched my leg," cries the " centre link " 

 of the stickle in a half-scared sort of manner. 



A great swirl of the churned-up water as the otter 

 — frightened by the moving array of legs — turns, tells us 

 that " centre link " does not err in his statement. 



