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The doctor's and the padre's ammunition was already running short, too; though I, having used my lance, had a larger supply. I calculated that I had what would kill twenty peccaries; but still there would remain several dozens to be disposed of. At last the doctor told me he had only a couple of charges left; and shouting to the padre, we ascertained that he had the same number.
They worked so perseveringly, that at first I had some little apprehension that they would succeed, and I began to consider how, if the tree fell, I should manage to escape my assailants. On climbing higher, I saw that the boughs of the tree I was on interlaced with another, and that I might, by catching hold of the latter, save myself, should the peccaries succeed in their attempts.
It is one of the innumerable and at present insoluble problems in the history of life on our planet. I spent a couple of days of hard work in getting the big white-lipped peccaries white-lipped being rather a misnomer, as the entire under jaw and lower cheek are white. They were said to be found on the other side of, and some distance back from, the river.
These peccaries generally live in herds, and it was probable that they abounded in the woody parts of the island. At any rate, they were eatable from head to foot, and Pencroft did not ask more from them. Towards the 15th of August, the state of the atmosphere was suddenly moderated by the wind shifting to the northwest.
Partly for this reason, and partly that he had all along held the piece "clubbed" in his hands, he had reserved his fire. Now was the time to deliver it. The jaguar was even more to be dreaded than the peccaries for they were now secure from the attacks of the latter, whereas they were not only within reach of the former, but in the very place to which the brute might fancy retreating.
They were quadrupeds of a greyish-brown colour, not larger than half-grown pigs; and pigs they were that is to say, they were peccaries. They were those of the species labiatus as could be seen by their white lips.
Were his men sickening, the peccaries were always healthy without, and the cockroaches within the camp; just escaping from a she-jaguar, he satisfies himself, ere he flees, that the print of her claws on the sand is precisely the size of a pewter dinner-plate; bitten by a scorpion, he makes sure of his scientific description in case he should expire of the bite; is the water undrinkable, there is at least some rational interest in the number of legs possessed by the centipedes which preoccupy it.
In the first place the whole herd of peccaries began to snap and grunt laik fury till the noise of the cyclone simmahd down into a sort of pitiful whine, laik the whine of a whipped dog. Imagine a cyclone comin' to that! Then, they tell me, you couldn't heah anything but the squealin' and gruntin' of those pesky little peccaries.
As the peccaries of Mexico and Central America pursue blindly their prey, so these small yelpers, Tray, Blanche and Sweetheart, of the trade world, had bitten at his heels persistently from the beginning of his weakness up to the present moment. Toward these he had no malice. He counted them but as he had counted his hunting dogs in better days.
Once we saw a small herd of peccaries, one a sow followed by three little pigs they are said to have only two young, but we saw three, although of course it is possible one belonged to another sow. The herd galloped into a mass of thorny cover the hounds could not penetrate; and when they were in safety we heard them utter, from the depths of the jungle, a curious moaning sound.
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