“Not to mention the rhinoceros,” observed Jack.
“Ah! to be sure—the rhinoceros; yes, I might have expected to find you in such low company, for ‘birds of a feather,’ you know, are said to ‘flock together.’”
“If there be any truth in that,” said I, “you are bound, on the same ground, to identify yourself with the frog.”
“By the way,” cried Peterkin, starting up and looking around the spot on which his interesting tête-à-tête had taken place, “where is the frog? It was just here that—Ah!—oh!—oh! poor, poor frog!
“‘Your course is run, your days are o’er;
We’ll never have a chat no more,’
“As Shakespeare has it. Well, well, who would have thought that so conversable and intelligent a creature should have come to such a melancholy end?”
The poor frog had indeed come to a sad and sudden end, and I felt quite sorry for it, although I could not help smiling at my companion’s quaint manner of announcing the fact.
Not being gifted with the activity of Peterkin, it had stood its ground when the rhinoceros charged, and had received an accidental kick from the great foot of that animal which had broken its back and killed it outright.
“There’s one comfort, however,” observed Jack, as we stood over the frog’s body: “you have been saved the disagreeable necessity of killing it yourself, Ralph.”
This was true, and I was not sorry that the rhinoceros had done me this service; for, to say truth, I have ever felt the necessity of killing animals in cold blood to be one of the few disagreeable points in the otherwise delightful life of a naturalist. To shoot animals in the heat and excitement of the chase I have never felt to be particularly repulsive or difficult; but the spearing of an insect, or the deliberate killing of an unresisting frog, are duties which I have ever performed with a feeling of deep self-abhorrence.