Horns 



swampy part of the forest would be reached, to be 

 Hghtly passed over by the trackers, but in which, 

 being in thick shooting-boots and loaded with a 

 heavy rifle, one sunk to the knees. To get out 

 absolutely silently was an impossibility, and the 

 look upon the shikari's face at the sUghtest noise 

 made one feel as if the lot of a condemned man 

 upon the scaffold with the rope round his neck 

 was by comparison quite an enviable one. Another 

 painful experience accompanying tracking, which 

 in its intensity becomes almost agony, is the 

 intense desire to cough, which often assails one. 

 This disagreeable experience must, I am sure, be 

 common to many. One struggles against it, 

 remembers that the wish is quite unusual, one 

 never ordinarily feels this idiotic desire, that it is 

 only necessary to think about something else to 

 forget all about it — it is of no use. After breathing 

 deeply, breathing lightly, breathing through the 

 nose, and not breathing at all, which results in 

 semi-suffocation, one has to give in, and then — 

 the shikari's hopeless look of surprise and pain. 



All the above experiences were gone through 

 as we cautiously followed on the trail of the 

 slowly moving herd. Fresher and fresher had 

 become the indications that they were not far off, 

 and for some fifteen minutes we had been moving 

 forward, the conditions being unusually favour- 

 able, without a sound to break the harmony of the 

 proceedings. Suddenly the silence is broken. A 



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