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. At 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 on me. I can see its
great, beautiful, lambent eyes still, and I seized an earthen water-
cooler and flung it straight at them. It was a noble shot; it burst
on the leopard's head like a shell and the leopard went for bush one
time. Twenty minutes after people began to drop in cautiously and
inquire if anything was the matter, and I civilly asked them to go
and ask the leopard in the bush, but they firmly refused. We found
the dog had got her shoulder slit open as if by a blow from a
cutlass, and the leopard had evidently seized the dog by the scruff
of her neck, but owing to the loose folds of skin no bones were
broken and she got round all right after much ointment from me,
which she paid me for with several bites.
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