THE HYAENA KILLED 141 



wheeled and scrambled over a bank, receiving a 

 hasty rear shot which, as I afterwards found, left 

 it but one limb to go with, for the bullet passed 

 clean through a hindleg and lodged in a foreleg. It 

 went on, however, and some time passed before I 

 descried it far off dragging itself painfully across an 

 open space. A careful shot finished it, and it died 

 under a thick bush, where we found it and dragged 

 it out. It proved to be a large male, measuring 

 4 feet 7 inches, from which something over a foot 

 must be deducted for its shabby tail. 



The natives all maintained still that their cow 

 had been killed by a panther, saying that the 

 hyaena had come on the second night, after their 

 manner, to fill its base belly with the leavings. And 

 there was some circumstantial evidence in favour 

 of this view. In the first place, I never heard of a 

 hyaena having the audacity to attack a cow ; in 

 the second, the tooth-marks on the cow showed that 

 it had been executed according to the tradition of 

 all the great cats — by seizing its throat and breaking 

 its neck ; and in the third, a hyaena, sitting down 

 to such a meal, would certainly have begun with 

 calf's head and crunched up every bone of the skull 

 before thinking of sirloin or rumpsteak. But the 

 absurdity of a panther being found in such a region 

 outweighed all this and I scoffed. 



I was yet to learn a lesson in humility out of this 

 adventure. Two years later I sailed over the bar 

 and dropped anchor at the same spot. I was met 



