Never will we forget that climb! We tried to start at daylight but it was well toward six o'clock before we got our men together. A Chinaman would drive an impatient man to apoplexy and an early grave for it is well-nigh impossible to get him started within an hour of the appointed time, and with a half dozen the difficulty is multiplied as many times. Just when you think all is ready and that there can be no possible reason for delaying longer, the whole crowd will disappear suddenly and you discover that they have gone for "chow." Then you know that the end is really in sight, for chow usually is the last thing.
We waited nearly two hours on this particular morning before we started on the long climb to the top of the mountain. The sun was simply blazing, and in fifteen minutes we were soaked with perspiration. When we were half way up the dogs disappeared in a small ravine overgrown with bamboo and sword grass and suddenly broke into a chorus of yelps. They had found a fresh trail and were driving our way.
Harry ran to a narrow opening in the jungle, shouting to us to watch another higher up. We were hardly in position when his rifle banged, followed by such a bedlam of yells and barks that we thought he must have killed nothing less than one of the hunters. Before we reached them Harry appeared, smiling all over, and dragging a muntjac (Muntiacus) by the fore legs. He had just made a beautiful shot, for the clearing he had been watching was not more than ten feet wide and the muntjac flashed across it at full speed. Caldwell fired while it was in mid-air and his bullet caught the animal at the base of the neck, rolling it over stone dead.
This beautiful little deer in Fukien is hardly larger than a fox. Its antlers are only two or three inches in length and rise from an elongated skin-covered pedicel instead of from the base of the skull as in all other members of the deer family. On each side of the upper jaw is a slender tusk, about two inches long, which projects well beyond the lips and makes a rather formidable weapon.
We hoped that this muntjac was going to prove a "good joss," but instead a disappointing day was in store for us. When we had worked our way to the very summit of the mountain under a merciless sun and over a trail which led through a smothering bamboo jungle, we saw dozens of fresh serow tracks. The animals were there without a doubt and we were on the qui vive with excitement.
A Chinese Hunter and a Muntjac
Brigands Killed in the Yen-ping Rebellion
We selected positions and the men made a long circuit to drive toward us as Caldwell had directed. After half an hour had passed we heard them yelling as they closed in, but what was our disgust to see them solemnly parading in single file up the bottom of the valley on an open trail and carefully avoiding all thickets where a serow could possibly be. As Harry expressed it, "all the animals had to do was to sit tight and watch the noble procession pass." The beaters very evidently knew nothing whatever about driving nor were we able to teach them, for they seriously objected to leaving the open trails and going into the bush.