We went through the wood, the hunter bending over a trail lying too faint on the green carpet of the forest for me to follow. We moved over difficult ground, often under the blaze of the African sun, and, intent upon the pursuit, noted neither the heat nor the flight of time. For some two miles of the dense scrub, the boar had gone steadily enough until the ground opened into a clearing, where the soil was sandy and vegetation correspondingly light. Here at last the track moved in a circle.
"See," said the hunter, a suspicion of enthusiasm in his tone, "he has been circling; that means he is looking for a lair. Stay here, if you will, with the horses while I follow him home." And in a minute he was out of sight.
I waited patiently enough for what seemed a long time, trying to catch the undersong that thrilled through the forest, "the horns of elf-land faintly blowing," the hum such as bees at home make when late May sees the chestnut trees in flower. Here the song was a veritable psalm of life, in which every tree, bird, bush, and insect had its own part to play. It might have been a primeval forest; even the horses were grazing quietly, as though their spirits had succumbed to the solemn influences around us. The great god Pan himself could not have been far away, and I felt that he might have shown himself—that it was fitting indeed for him to appear in such a place and at such a season.
The hunter came back silently as he had gone.
SELLING ORANGES
"All's well," he said as he remounted; "he is a fine fellow, and has his lair most comfortably placed. And you should have come with me, but your creaking English gaiters would have disturbed him, while my soft native ones let me go within thirty or forty yards of his new home in safety." My companion was wearing the Moorish gaiters of the sort his trackers used—things made of palmetto. When they follow on foot the trackers wear leather aprons too, in order to deaden the sound made by their passage through the resisting undergrowth.
Then we rode back by another route, down paths that only an Arab horse could have hoped to negotiate, through densely wooded forest tracks that shut out the sun, but allowed its brightness to filter through a leafy sieve and work a pattern of dappled light and shadow on the grass, for our delectation. Most of the way had been made familiar in pursuit of some wild boar that would not stand and fight but hurried into the wildest and most difficult part of the forest, charging through every bush, however thick and thorny, in vain endeavour to shake off the pitiless pack. For my companion no corner of the forest lacked memories, some recent, some remote, but all concerned with the familiar trial of skill in which the boar had at last yielded up his pleasant life.
We came quite suddenly upon the stream and past a riot of green bamboo and rushes, saw the kaid's house, more than ever gaunt and dishevelled by daylight, with the shining water in front, the wild garden beyond, and on the other bank the Susi muleteers sitting with the black slave in pleasant contemplation of the work Salam had done. Kaid M'Barak dozed on one of the boxes, nursing his beloved gun, while the horse equally dear to him stood quietly by, enjoying the lush grasses. Salam and the tracker were not far away, a rendezvous was appointed for the hunt, and Pepe Ratto, followed by his men, cantered off, leaving me to a delightful spell of rest, while Salam persuaded the muleteers to load the animals for the last few miles of the road between us and Mogador.