The jungle at night is a world unknown to most shikaris. Even Clarence was not familiar here.
At twelve he called me, furtively pulling my coat sleeve, and saying, “Wake! wake! wake!” I “awakened,” and took the watch. My rifle lay beside me on my right, the oryx trophies on my left. The fire was piled up, shedding shafts of light into the fearsome darkness. The ponies stood dejectedly. This tense silent watching is more of a trial than playacting sleep. I fixed my eyes on the inky blackness ahead, and it was not long before my fancy peopled the shadows with lurking forms. I chid myself. Suddenly I could make out two blazing lights, gleaming like little lamps. The eyes of some preying animal. I sidled over to the sleeping Clarence, and pushed him. He wakened instantly. I told him of the eyes. “Shebel,” he said. A leopard! This was nice, but why bother us when the remains of a whole oryx was so close to hand. We sat and waited. The eyes again—sometimes at a lower level than others, as though the beast crouched as he gazed. “Let us fire together,” I said.
At my soft “One, two, three,” we blazed away at the twin specks of light. A scuffle, then a hideous screaming cry, that echoed again in the stillness. Worse remains behind. The ponies thoroughly upset by the unusual sounds of the jungle at night, and not expecting the enormous report, simply stampeded before we had time to get to them. They made off in mad terror, and there we were in a worse hole than ever. Sleep was out of the question. We made some more soup to pass the hours, julienne and mulligatawny this time, and after that I fell to talking to Clarence about England. He asked many questions that he evidently badly wanted answered. One was to know if these trophies had some great intrinsic value there that so many people come at such trouble and danger to themselves to get them? He evidently was much puzzled.
At last the dawn came, and at the first hint of it we prepared to move. The scene was of rare beauty. In the dense undergrowth that hid the trees to the height of several feet was a wonder world of mystery. Webs of Arachne’s weaving made bars of silver gossamer from bush to bough. ’Twas like a scene from Shakespeare’s woodlands. The same thrill and marvel, joy, happiness and pain. For life is not all a song. Fierce burning strife comes oft to mar the stillness, death, too, in crudest form. In the jungle all is one long struggle for survival; no excuses are made, none wanted, they kill to live, just as we human things kill each other every day; only in civilisation it is done more delicately.
First we investigated the place of the eyes, and there, sure enough, was a blood trail. We followed but a few yards to find a large striped hyæna—a magnificent beast, yellow gray, with black stripes on his shoulders, and beautiful mane and bushy gray tail. He measured from nose to tail four feet eight inches. We skinned and decapitated him, a long and horrid business, and then took up our none too pleasant loads and departed. We passed the remains of the dead oryx, but there was little left of him. The hyænas had been feasting all the night, and now the vultures were picking his bones. It was still darkish as we took our way campwards, the mad rush of the ponies being clearly visible to us. Through bushes, anyhow, helter skelter they had pelted.
I had to stop and rest frequently, as my load was more than a little heavy, though Clarence carried as much, and more, than he ought. The rifles alone were no light weight, and when it came to the slain animals as well we found them all a bit of a trial.
In some thick grass a great wart-hog rose up before me, and after giving me a look from his tiny fierce eyes, lost himself again. I flung my load down, all but the very necessary rifle, and went after him. He made some ugly rushes in the long grass, but I dodged and chased him to clearer country, until I could get in a shot which, raking him, ended his career as a perfect king of his kind. I did not want to take his tusks merely, as I desired his head to be a complete trophy. But when Clarence strenuously refused to touch the creature I knew I could not then, tired as I was, play butcher myself. So I had to be contented with digging out his huge tushes. And a very messy job it was too.
We took up our loads again, and went back over the ground over which we had chased the oryx the evening before. I was progressing wearily enough when I almost stepped on a yellow snake, with a dark head, lying near a thorn bush. It was only about eighteen inches long, but quite long enough to make me jump some feet, all encumbered as I was. Clarence looked genuinely surprised.
“You not afraid of aliphint,” he said, a thing we had about as much chance of meeting as the man in the moon; “what for you ’fraid now?”
I told him women have a long-standing quarrel with serpents: that a serpent once spoiled the happiness of a woman and turned her out of a garden where she fain would be.