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Our procession was truly formidable. Fifty or more natives went on ahead making a path. Then we followed, fifteen in number, each with a native to carry his gun. The rear was brought up by twoscore more and half as many dogs. Three-quarters of an hour’s walk brought us to our first beat. The head shikaris placed us in an open position, from fifty to one hundred yards apart, facing the jungle. The beaters, in the meantime, had gone by a long detour around the jungle to drive whatever it contained within reach of our guns.

In the second of these beats (I described the first in the opening of this chapter) a deer ran out far in advance of the pigs. We caught but a fleeting glimpse of it above the grass. My gun and that of my neighbor went off simultaneously. The deer disappeared. We rushed to the spot and found the leaves dyed with blood. Then commenced a chase, which, although fruitless, was well worth the exertion. All the panorama of tropical life seemed to lay in our tracks. For an half-hour we traversed the rolling plain with its burden of grass. Some smoker dropped a match in it, and in an instant it was all ablaze, spreading away like a whirlwind, burning only the very tips, toward a distant jungle. Then we dove into a bosky wood by a narrow winding path, and through a stream of water. The path was like a tunnel, the dense foliage shutting it in on both sides and above. The thorns of the rattans reached down and tore our clothes, and long trailing rubber-vines caught up our helmets and held our feet. In a marshy bit of jungle, a small colony of unwieldy sago palms found root, while pitcher-plants and orchids hung from almost every limb. Clumsy gray iguanas and long-tailed lizards of a brilliant green rushed up the trunks of lichen-covered trees. Troops of monkeys went scattering away on all sides, and black squirrels chattered on in the perfect security of the dim obscurity. In a bit of sandy bottom, a silken-haired, zebra-striped tapir scuttled away ere we were half alive to his presence.

Outside was the metallic glare of the Malayan sun once more, now at its height, and another march was before us, over the burning hot mesa. At one o’clock we came upon a half-neglected plantation. The bloody trail of the deer led through it. In the centre of the plantation we found a huge wedge-shaped attap house for drying pepper, and there we rested.

Our tiffin baskets were six miles away in the dray, and sending after them was out of the question. So we foraged for eatables. Cocoanuts were easily obtained from trees all about, and a little whiskey mixed with its milk made a very refreshing drink. Pineapples, small oranges, limes, papayas, custard apples, and bananas were in large quantities. Our drivers added to this bill of fare by roasting the sweet-potato-like roots of the tapioca. After this impromptu lunch they compounded their quids of areca-nut and lime, and were ready once more to beat up an adjacent jungle for deer, pig, or tiger.

As before, we were soon in position in the open before the jungle and the beaters were yelling at the top of their voices.

I was half dozing in the sun, trying to smoke a Manila cigar that my mouth was too dry to draw, when I was aroused by my neighbor, who called my attention to a file of pigs at the extreme end of the line. I could just see what was going on from the knoll on which I was standing. They were received by Major Rich, one of his subalterns, and his Hindu gun-carrier. One of the file fell at the first volley, two more broke through the line, and the remaining six or seven, led by a fierce old fellow, from whose long tusks the foam dripped, turned up the line and charged point-blank on the next gunner, who fired and missed, but succeeded in keeping them between the line and the jungle. The fourth gun brought down the second pig and wounded the boar in the shoulder. Frantic with rage and pain, the old fellow tore up the ground and grass with his tusks and then, seeming to give up all idea of escape, wheeled sharply around and with his back bristles standing erect and his mouth open, charged directly on to the fifth, who was in the act of throwing the cartridge into the barrel. Taken completely by surprise, the officer gave one lusty yell and started to run in line with the gun on his right. The boar was gaining on him at every step when he tripped and fell. The report of No. 6’s Winchester Express rang out almost simultaneously. For an instant we held our breaths, wondering whether the man or boar had been hit. It was a splendid shot and took a steady hand. The boar’s shoulder was shattered and his heart reached. Two or three angry grunts and he lay quiet. He weighed close to three hundred pounds. The bristles on his back were white with age. All in all, he was not nice to look at.

As half of our beaters were Mohammedans and so forbidden to touch pork, the burden of carrying our pigs the six miles through lallang grass, jungle and swamp land, came hard on our Brahmists. We knew that the only way to make them work was to call them “Sons of dogs” and walk off and leave them with a parting injunction to “get in by the time we did if they wanted their wages.”

This we did without deigning to notice their pathetic gestures, heart-rending appeals and protestations to the “Sons of the Heaven-Born” that they could not lift one hundredth part of such burdens.