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The firing had opened up all along the line. The drivers were pushing in nearer and nearer, beating the grass and clumps of bushes, seemingly regardless of the widely flying balls. I suspect they held our prowess in contempt. I know they looked it, when it was discovered that out of the dozen pigs they had raised, we had allowed over half to escape. Then, too, their lives were insured, in a way; for they knew that their deaths would cost us twenty big Mexican dollars.

Pig-hunting is the one big-game hunt that can be indulged in on the Malay Peninsula without great preparation and danger. Deer and tapirs are scarce. Tigers, or harimau as the Malays call them, abound, but live in the depths of the almost inaccessible jungle, and come forth only at rare intervals, except in the case of the man-eaters, who are usually ignominiously caught in pitfalls, very seldom affording true sport. Elephants are still hunted in the native states north of Singapore, but the sport is too expensive for the generality of sportsmen. One of the peculiar attributes of the Malayan tiger is his decided penchant for Chinese flesh, repeatedly striking down Chinese coolies in the fields to the exclusion of the Malays or Europeans who are working by their side. Perhaps once a month, a tiger or his skin will be brought into the city by natives, and several times at night I have heard them in the jungle; but to my knowledge only three have been shot by European sportsmen during my residence in the island. So wild pigs really remain the one item of big game.

The pigs live in the jungle bordering plantations in which they can range for pineapples, sweet potatoes, and tapioca root. They are the ordinary wild hog, black in color, and fleet of foot. The older ones have good-sized tusks and show fight when cornered. The lone sportsman has very little chance of obtaining a shot, so they are hunted in large companies of from five to fifteen guns. Such parties generally organize a hunt at least once a week and leave Singapore early in the morning for an all-day shoot.

The pig hunts organized by the officers of the Royal Artillery are the largest, and as a description of one is a description of all, I will take one up in regular order, rather than quote from many.

We left Singapore at six o’clock in the morning in a four-horse dray. As the sun had not reached the tops of the trees, the atmosphere was mild and pleasant. A half-hour took us outside the great cosmopolitan city, of three hundred thousand inhabitants. The low, cool bungalows with their wide-spreading lawns gave place to the grass-thatched huts of the Chinese coolies, and the omnipresent eating-stalls. A hard-packed road carried us through almost endless cocoanut groves. At intervals a Malay kampong, or village, was revealed in the heart of the grove, its queer attap-thatched houses raised a man’s height from the ground, and connected with it by rickety ladders. Dozens of nude little children played under the shadow of the palms, while the comely faces and syrah-stained teeth of their mothers peeped at us from behind low barred windows. The cocoanut groves were superseded by tapioca, pepper, and coffee plantations. At regular distances were neat stations, manned by Malay and Sikh police. The roads over which we dashed were in perfect repair. In another hour we were nine miles from Singapore and near our first “beat.”

Major Rich had sent his shikaris on the night before to collect beaters, so that when we arrived we were welcomed by a small army of Klings, Tamils, and Malays, and the usual sprinkling of pariah dogs. A wild, strange set are these beaters. They toil not, neither do they spin. Their wives do that occasionally, making a few sarongs for home use and an odd one for the market. Cocoanuts, pineapples, a little patch of paddy with a dozen half-wild chickens, and perchance, if they are not Mohammedans, a pig with its litter, afford them sustenance. For their day’s beating they were to receive fifteen cents apiece. They were all ranged in line and counted, after which we took up our march through a plantation of tapioca, the brush standing about level with our heads. Chinese coolies were working about its roots keeping down the great pest of Malayan farmers,–lallang grass. The tapioca was broken in places by a few acres of pepper vines and again by neglected coffee shrubs.