it— and then— well I will yield to nobody in terror ; fortunately
as I say my terror is a special variety ; fortunately because no
one can manage their own terror. You can suppress alarm,
excitement, fear, fright, and all those small-fry emotions, but
the real terror is as dependent on the inner make of you as
the colour of your eyes, or the shape of your nose ; and when
terror ascends its throne in my mind 1 become preternaturally
artful, and intelligent to an extent utterly foreign to my true
nature, and save, in the case of close quarters with bad big
animals, a feeling of rage against some unknown person that
such things as leopards, elephants, crocodiles, &c., should be
allowed out loose in that disgracefully dangerous way, I do not
think much about it at the time. Whenever I have come across
an awful animal in the forest and I know it has seen me I take
Jerome’s advice, and instead of relying on the power of the
human eye rely upon that of the human leg, and effect a
masterly retreat in the face of the enemy. I f I know it has
not seen me I sink in my tracks and keep an eye on it, hoping
that it will go away soon. Thus I once came upon a leopard.
I had got caught in a tornado in a dense forest. The massive,
mighty trees were waving like a wheat-field in an autumn
gale in England, and I dare say a field mouse in a wheat-field
in a gale would have heard much the same uproar. The
tornado shrieked like ten thousand vengeful demons. The
great trees creaked and groaned and strained against it and
their bush-rope cables groaned and smacked like whips, and
ever and anon a thundering crash with snaps like pistol shots
told that they and their mighty tree had strained and struggled
in vain. The fierce rain came in a roar, tearing to shreds the
leaves and blossoms and deluging everything. I was making
bad weather of it, and climbing up over a lot of rocks out of a
gully bottom where I had been half drowned in a stream, and
on getting my head to the level of a block of rock I observed
right in front of my eyes, broadside on, maybe a yard off,
certainly not more, a big leopard. He was crouching on the
ground,with his magnificenthead thrown backand his eyes shut.
His fore-paws were spread out in front of him and he lashed
the ground with his tail, and I grieve to say, in face of
that awful danger— I don’t mean me, but the tornado— that
depraved creature swore, softly, but repeatedly and profoundly.
I did not get all these facts up in one glance, for no sooner did
I see him than I ducked under the rocks, and remembered
thankfully that leopards are said to have no power of smell.
But I heard his observation on the weather, and the flip-flap
of his tail on the ground. Every now and then I cautiously
took a look at him with one eye round a rock-edge, and he
remained in the same position. My feelings tell me he
remained there twelve months, but my calmer judgment puts
the time down at twenty minutes; and at last, on taking
another cautious peep, I saw he was gone. A t the time I
wished I knew exactly where, but I do not care about that
detail now, for I saw no more of him. He had moved off in
one of those weird lulls which you get in a tornado, when for
a few seconds the wild herd of hurrying winds seem to have
lost themselves, and wander round crying and wailing like
lost souls, until their common rage seizes them again and they
rush back to their work of destruction. It was an immense
pleasure to have seen the great creature like that. He was
so evidently enraged and baffled by the uproar and dazzled
by the floods of lightning that swept down into the deepest
recesses of the forest, showing at one second every detail of
twig, leaf, branch, and stone round you, and then leaving you
in a sort of swirling dark until the next flash came ; this,
and the great conglomerate roar of the wind, rain and thunder,
was enough to bewilder any living thing.
I have never hurt a leopard intentionally ; I am habitually
kind to animals, and besides I do not think it is ladylike to
go shooting things with a gun. Twice, however, I have been in
collision with them. On one occasion a big leopard had
attacked a dog, who, with her family, was occupying a broken-
down hut next to mine. The dog was a half-bred boarhound,
and a savage brute on her own account. I, being roused by
the uproar, rushed out into the feeble moonlight, thinking she
was having one of her habitual turns-up with other dogs, and
I saw a whirling mass of animal matter within a yard of me.
I fired two mushroom-shaped native stools in rapid succession
into the brown of it, and the meeting broke up into a
leopard and a dog. The leopard crouched, I think to spring
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