“Fancy seeing a herd of those fellows!” Wally exclaimed, gazing in admiration at the noble head. “But however would he get those antlers through timber?”
“I don’t think he frequented forests much,” O’Neill said. “The plains suited him better. But he must have been able to lay his horns right back—all deer can do that when necessary. I dare say he could dodge through trees at a good rate.”
“Well, he looks as if he could hardly have got through the doorway of a Town Hall,” Wally commented. “You have a splendid lot of heads. Did you shoot them yourself?”
“A few—I can’t do much stalking,” O’Neill said. “I got those two tigers, but that was from the back of an elephant. My father shot most of the others; he was a mighty hunter. The trout were mine”—he indicated some huge stuffed specimens, in glass cases, on the wall.
“They’re splendid,” Wally said, regarding his host with much admiration. “And you actually shot the tigers! Was it very exciting?”
“No—the trout took far more killing. The elephants and the beaters did most of the work so far as the tigers were concerned; it was only a sort of arm-chair performance on my part. I simply sat in a fairly comfortable howdah and fired when I was told to do so.”
“It sounds simple, but—well, I’d like to have the chance. And you must have shot straight,” Wally said. He glanced from the grim masks to the slight figure with ungainly shoulders, marvelling in his heart at the contrast between hunter and hunted. At the moment John O’Neill did not look capable of killing a mouse.
He dropped in to a big arm-chair, motioning Wally to another. The colour was returning to his face, and his eyes began to lose their pain-filled expression. In the big chair’s depths he looked smaller than ever; but his eyes were very bright, and soon Wally forgot his morning’s fishing and altogether lost sight of his host’s infirmities in the fascination of his talk. Half-crippled as he was, he had been everywhere, and done many things that stronger men long vainly to do. He had travelled widely, and not as the average tourist, who skims over many experiences without gathering the cream of any. John O’Neill had gone off the beaten track in search of the unusual, and he had found it in a dozen different countries. He had hunted and fished; had shot big game in India and made his way up unknown rivers in South America, until sickness had forced him to abandon enterprise and return to civilization to save his life. Wandering in the bypaths of the world, he had brought home a harvest of queer experiences; he told them simply, with a twinkle in his eye and a quick joy in the humorous that often left his hearer shaking with laughter.
Wally listened in growing wonderment and a great sense of pity. If this man, so cruelly handicapped, had already done so much, what might he not have done, given a straight and sound body! Yet how he had accomplished even the tenth part of what he had done was a mystery. Wally looked at the frail, slight figure with respectful amazement.
John O’Neill broke off presently.