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.
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