AN EXPLOKATION IN THE FAE EAST 333 



in the grass. A ball from the heavy rifle in the neck turned 

 her, and she passed between B. and me, preventing both of 

 us from further firing. The dogs now tackled her, " Tin- 

 ker " in particular (whose deeds of valour in the wolf line 

 have already been recorded) striving to seize her by the 

 nose as she tore along. A couple of hundred yards further 

 on she stopped in another patch of grass, the dogs baying 

 round her, and Tinker, exhausted by the great heat, Ipng 

 down in the shade of a bush, but flying at her the moment 

 she tried to move. We marched up, at a short interval 

 from each other, and, arriving first on her blind side, I saw 

 her glance at B., shake off the dogs, and creeping forward 

 in a stealthy manner hke a tiger, watch for him, with horns 

 laid back, behind the screen of grass and bushes that 

 intervened. Before he arrived, however, I took a steady 

 shot at her neck with the Kttle double fourteen-gauge 

 riflet dropping her stone dead. We found she had an old 

 bullet woimd in the flank, which was full of maggots, 

 accounting for her extremely poor condition and unusual 

 savageness. The smaU-bore rifle of our predecessor in 

 these hunting-grounds was probably the cause. Her horns 

 were of fuU cow length, the pair measuring eight feet four 

 inches round the curve and across the skuU. 



The herd was now clean gone, of course, in the mean- 

 time, and we turned towards camp. On the way B. shot 

 a cow, and I wounded a buU, and lost him in the long grass. 

 While smoking our pipes after breakfast, one of the men 

 who had remained to look after the wounded bull came in 

 to say that he had been found lying down in an open plain 

 about a mile away, looking very savage. We salHed forth 

 immediately to encounter him, and found him lying close 

 to a Uttle ridge that had been the embankment of a rice 

 field when the country was cultivated, and was now over- 

 grown with tall grass. He had taken up a position which 

 commanded all approaches, and, as there was no cover, 

 there was nothing for it but to march up on foot. When 

 within about sixty yards I took a shot with a small rifle, 

 on the accuracy of which I could rely, at his broad forehead 

 rechning on the bank. But the angle was wrong, and the 

 ball glanced off without injury to the bull, who sprang 



