THE SHOT AND THE CHARGE. 235 given a cover against any charge, for it formed a natural “abattis; " but it was impossible to get there without being seen by the cattle, who would either charge us, or bolt immediately. I therefore arranged that our two beaters should at once fall back again into the jungle, out of which we had advanced some four hundred yards. When they were safe, Jadee and I were to single out a bull and fire, then run for the fallen tree, to obtain shelter before the rest of the herd were upon us. We accordingly carried this into execution, levelling our muskets at a great black bull buffalo, who was on the look-out whilst the rest fed. Something alarmed the brute: he evidently caught sight of the beaters retiring to the jungle, and, as if by magic, seemed to communicate an alarm to the herd, which contained not more than four or five cows with calves and another bull. Seeing by his vicious look that he was going to charge my men, I sang out "Fire!" Both our barrels went off together, and down dropped the look-out bull. I was so enchanted that I looked only at him. "Lari-lacasse!" screamed Jadee, suiting the action to the word, by starting on his legs and running as fast as he could for the fallen tree. It required no repetition of the admonition for me to follow suit, and the more so as one glance showed me the other bull was in chase. 236 DESCRIPTION OF A BUFFALO. The fifty yards I had to go over were done like lightning, and I leapt the stem and dashed after Jadee amongst the branches as the brute crashed against them. After trotting briskly round to see if there was an opening, it pawed the earth fiercely; and taking another volley from us, of which one ball alone wounded it, the bull beat a retreat, at which I was not sorry, for a more spiteful-looking beast than an enraged buffalo, I do not suppose the whole range of the animal kingdom can produce. It has none of that beauty of form which strikes one in looking at a European bull. Its black smooth skin is thinly covered with hair, not unlike that of an English pig; its frame is long, bony, and rather angular; the feet or hoofs clumsy and massive; the head long, with an appearance of cunning ferocity about the eye, very unlike the fearless look of our British bull. The horns are long and sharp, thick as a man's arm close to the head, and forming so open a curve that they can be laid almost close back in the hollow of the shoulder; and their efficiency I was very ready to believe in, without further proof than Jadee's assurance. We e now left our fortress and joined the beaters, who told us that the wounded bull had retreated into the jungle, but was bleeding too profusely to go far; we followed OBTAIN PLENTY OF BUFFALO-MEAT. 237 up his trail, and soon found him in the centre of a thicket. After some trouble we dislodged him and administered the coup de grâce, much to our delight, for neither Jadee nor I were sportsmen in the proper acceptance of the word; and as we cheered over our trophy, I own to the soft impeachment of allowing my mind to recur to beefsteaks and marrow-bones, to which my rice-famished palate had been long a stranger. Ripping open the bull, we cut off as much meat as we could shoulder, and proceeded to the Emerald," to send all hands up for the rest of the 66 carcase. 238 JAMBOO AND THE RIVER SPIRIT. CHAP. XVIII. Jamboo frightened by a River Spirit. The Aborigines of The Spirits of the Jungle.— - Musquitoes and Sand-flies. — The Village on Fire.Flaming Cocoa-nut Trees. Intentional Destruction. Traces of Man rapidly obliterated in the East. THE men soon brought off all the meat from the dead buffalo, and as there was much more than we could eat at once, the surplus was cut into thin shreds and hung up about the vessel, so that on the morrow the action of the sun should convert it into what, in South America, is styled "charqui," or dried beef. Towards sunset, the sampan returned down the river with only half a load of shell-fish, Jamboo and his crew having been frightened off the fishing-ground by what Sutoo, the quarter-master, assured me was an Untoo, or evil spirit. He explained to me, that while busy up to their knees in water, an odd noise had been heard under the over JAMBOO AND THE RIVER SPIRIT. 239 hanging trees on the opposite bank: looking in that direction, they saw a man's head come up out of the water; the face was covered with hair, and it eyed them in a fierce, threatening manner; they shouted, jumped into the sampan, and fired at the creature ; it dived for a minute, and then appeared again, grinning horribly. Jamboo and his men decided that it was a demon, and thought it better to decamp whilst their skins were whole. I laughed heartily at their fears, and tried to explain to them that it might be a seal. Jamboo, however, stoutly insisted that no seals were ever seen in Malayia; and as I found myself in the minority, I quietly acquiesced in the supposition that it was an unclean spirit. Jadee said, if not the Old Gentleman, that it must be one of the wild men who could imitate the appearance of monkeys or apes, the cry of birds, or the howlings of wild beasts, so as even to deceive animals. These wild men are the sad remnants of an aboriginal race of diminutive negroes, who, at one time, were more numerous, but are now only found in small isolated parties, in the most inaccessible fastnesses of Malayia, living amongst the branches of trees, to avoid the snakes and beasts of prey. They are human beings in their most degraded formwithout religion, without any acknowledged form of |