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Heller shouted that he had fired at a huge sambur running along the edge of a bean field but the animal showed no sign of being hit. We easily picked up the trail in the soft earth and in a few moments found several drops of blood, showing that at least one bullet had found its mark. The blood soon ceased and we began to wonder if the sambur had not been merely scratched.
We sat absolutely motionless and listened to the breath of the jungle, which although without definite sound, was vibrant with life. Now and then a muntjac barked hoarsely and the roar of a sambur stag thrilled us like an electric shock. Once a wild boar grunted on the opposite bank of the river, the sound coming to us clear and sharp through the stillness although the animal was far away.
Without giving me an opportunity to reach a position in front of them, they began to work up the hill, and I had a fleeting glimpse of a sambur silhouetted against the sky as it dashed over the summit. Two days later while I was out with ten other men who had a fairly good pack of dogs, the first party succeeded in killing a female sambur.
He was a planter on the Nilgiris, and the brother of a friend of mine, and was in the habit of going out at the end of his day's work with a book and a gun, and seating himself on the hillside to look out for sambur deer. On one occasion he was thus sitting in the long grass when he heard something coming through it.
At the town of Met, near Burnt Island, where his tomb still exists, he became the father of all the gentle blood and the only certain descent in the Somali country: by Magaden, a free woman, he had Gerhajis, Awal, and Arab; and by a slave or slaves, Jailah, Sambur, and Rambad.
We had been driving jungle for sambur deer in the Balaghat district, and instead of posting myself upon a mucharn, or occupying any fixed position, I remained upon my elephant Hurri Ram.
Our interpreter, Wu, took the heart as his perquisite, carefully extracted the blood, and dried it in a basin. The liver also seemed to be an especial desideratum, and in fact every part of the viscera was saved. We expected from our easy hunt of the morning that it would not be difficult to get sambur, and indeed, Heller did see another in the afternoon but failed to kill it.
But it is natural that all wild animals should become more dangerous the more they are hunted, and, rather to my amusement, my old shikari, to whom I have previously alluded, complained in a querulous and aggrieved tone that every animal even the sambur deer seemed to charge one nowadays.
There were undoubtedly several sambur in the vicinity of our camp but they fed entirely during the night and spent the day in such thick cover that it was impossible to drive them out except with good beaters or dogs. We hunted faithfully every morning and afternoon but did not get another shot and, after a week, moved camp to the base of a great mountain range six miles away near a Liso village.
Your brains must be one fossiliferous deposit, in which gaur and sambur, hog and tiger, rhinoceros and elephant, lie heaped together, as the old ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs are heaped in the lias rocks at Lyme. And therefore I like to think of you. I try to picture your feelings to myself.
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