On The Other Hand,
A Man Could Not, Save By Sheer Good Fortune, Rely On Stalking
Near Enough To Use A Shotgun.
Therefore we evolved a method
productive of the maximum noise, row, barked shins, thorn wounds,
tumbles, bruises-and colobus!
It was very simple. We took about
twenty boys into the jungle with us, and as soon as we caught
sight of a colobus we chased him madly. That was all there was to
it.
And yet this method, simple apparently to the point of
imbecility, had considerable logic back of it after all; for
after a time somebody managed to get underneath that colobus when
he was at the top of a tree. Then the beast would hide.
Consider then a tumbling riotous mob careering through the jungle
as fast as the jungle would let it, slipping, stumbling, falling
flat, getting tangled hopelessly, disentangling with profane
remarks, falling behind and catching up again, everybody yelling
and shrieking. Ahead of us we caught glimpses of the sleek
bounding black and white creature, running up the long slanting
limbs, and dropping like a plummet into the lower branches of the
next tree. We white men never could keep up with the best of our
men at this sort of work, although in the open country I could
hold them well enough. We could see them dashing through the
thick cover at a great rate of speed far ahead of us. After an
interval came a great shout in chorus. By this we knew that the
quarry had been definitely brought to a stand.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 233 of 371
Words from 60734 to 60996
of 97210
