But their object was to capture, not to kill, and Oliver began to wonder more and more how this could ever be effected.
The shikaree paused in perplexity. He had passed his life among the wildest fastnesses of the district. He had watched the ways of the living creatures who lorded it there. He had studied the tastes, habits, and disposition of every creature in the forest. He was well aware the wolves would draw to their lair with the return of day, and prepared to watch the night out by the korinda bush. Then a sudden thought seemed to strike him. He sprang up and began anew to examine the ground around the path the wolf had chosen. A deep hole, the burrow of some wild animal, gave him intense satisfaction. He heaved aside the decaying arm of a tree which had fallen across it. Oliver came to his help, and adding his strength to that of the wiry hunter, they dislodged it altogether, and laid the burrow open.
Oliver saw that it was a dangerous pitfall, and wondered what was to be done with it.
Tara leaped down and began to enlarge it with the hunting-knife he carried in his belt. Then he tore off a huge piece of bark from a neighbouring tree, and pulled up a shrub by the roots. With this impromptu shovel and broom he set himself to clear out the loose earth and stones which had collected in the bottom of the hole.
Oliver meanwhile was keeping guard over the shikaree's skin of meal and the earthen pot, which on this particular occasion did not contain water. What it did contain he could not imagine, for the edge was sticky in the extreme. Before the moon began to wane the burrow was enlarged to a good-sized pit. The shikaree grew exultant. He beckoned to Oliver to follow him, and the two wandered about among the trees until they found some giant leaves of a bauhinia creeper.
They stripped the stem as far as they could reach, and returned with their load of leaves to the edge of the pit.
The shikaree spread them on the ground before it. Then he smeared them over with the contents of his jar.
"What is it?" thought Oliver—"bird lime?"
Then he saw what the clever old man was about—making a wolf-trap.
CHAPTER XIII.