Our first meal of the day finished, we—that is, Nalik, Sru, and myself—lay down under the shade or the newly-built thatched roof and smoked our pipes in content, whilst the women and children, attended by the dogs, bathed in the deepest part of the pool, shouting, laughing, and splashing and diving till they were tired. The dogs, mongrel as they were, enjoyed the fun as much as their masters, biting and worrying each other playfully as they swam round and round, and then crawling out upon the bank, they ran to and fro upon the grassy sward till they too were glad to rest under the shade of the clump of coco-palms.
In the afternoon—leaving the rest of our party to amuse themselves by catching crayfish and to make traps for wild pigs—Sru, Nalik, Toka, and myself set out towards the pool at the head of the river, where, I was assured, we were sure to get a pig or two by nightfall. The dogs evidently were equally as certain of this as Nalik and Sru, for the moment they saw the two men pick up their heavy hunting-spears they sprang to their feet and began howling and yelping in concert till they were beaten into silence by the women. I brought with me a short Snider carbine—the best and handiest weapon to stop a wild pig at a short range—and a double-barrelled muzzle-loading shot-gun. The latter I gave to the “devil” to carry, and promised him that he should fire at least five shots from it at pigeons or mountain fowl before we returned to the village.
Following a narrow footpath which led along the right bank of the stream, we struck directly into the heart of the mountain forest, and in a few minutes the voices, shouts, and laughter of our companions sounded as if they were miles and miles away. Now and then as we got deeper into the dark, cool shade caused by the leafed dome above, we heard the shrill cry of the long-legged mountain cock—a cry which I can only describe as an attempt at the ordinary barnyard rooster’s “cock-a-doodle-do” combined with the scream of a cat when its tail is trodden upon by a heavy-booted foot. Here in these silent, darkened aisles of the forest it sounded weird and uncanny in the extreme, and aroused an intense desire to knock the creature over; but I forebore to fire, although we once had a view of a fine bird, attended by a hen and chicks, scurrying across the leaf-strewn ground not fifty feet away. Everywhere around us the great grey pigeons were sounding their booming notes from the branches overhead, but of these too we took no heed, for a shot would have alarmed every wild pig within a mile of us.
An hour’s march brought us to the crest of a spur covered with a species of white cedar, whose branches were literally swarming with doves and pigeons, feeding upon small, sweet-scented berries about the size of English haws. Here we rested awhile, the dogs behaving splendidly by lying down quietly and scarcely moving as they watched me taking off my boots and putting on a pair of cinnet (coir fibre) sandals. Just beneath us was a deep canyon, at the bottom of which, so Nalik said, was a tiny rivulet which ran through banks covered with wild yams and ti plants.
“There be nothing so sweet to the mouth of the mountain pig as the thick roots of the ti,” said Nalik to me in a low voice. “They come here to root them up at this time of the year, before the wild yams are well grown, and the ti both fattens and sweetens. Let us start.”
At a sign from Sru, Nalilc and the boy Toka, followed by the dogs, went off towards the head of the canyon, so as to drive down to the old man and myself any pigs which might be feeding above, whilst we slipped quietly down the side of the spur to the bank of the rivulet. Sru carried my gun (which I had loaded with ball) as well as his spear. I had my Snider.
We had not long to wait, for presently we heard the dogs give cry, and the silence of the forest was broken by the demoniac yells of Nalik and the “devil,” who had started a party of two boars and half a dozen sows with their half-grown progeny, which were lying down around the buttressed sides of a great tika-tree. They (the pigs) came down the side of the rivulet with a tremendous rush, right on top of us in fact. I fired at the leader—a great yellow, razorbacked boar with enormous tusks—missed him, but hit a young sow who was running on his port side. Sru, with truer aim, fired both barrels of his gun in quick succession, and the second boar dropped with a bullet through both shoulders, and a dear little black and yellow striped four-months’-old porker went under to the other barrel with a broken spine. Then in another three or four minutes we were kicking and “belting” about half of the dogs, who, maddened by the smell of blood from the wounded animals, sprang upon them and tried to tear them to pieces; the rest of the pack (Heaven save the term!) had followed the flying swine down the canyon; they turned up at the camp some three or four hours later with bloodied jaws and gorged to distension.
The boar which Sru had shot was lean enough in all conscience, but the young sow and the four-months’-old porker were as round-bodied as barrels, and as fat as only pigs can be fat. After disembowelling them, we hoisted the carcasses up under the branch of a tree out of the reach of the dogs, and sent Toka back to the camp to tell the women to come and carry them away.
Then, as we had still another hour or two of daylight, and I longed to see the deep, deep pool at the head of the river, even if it were but for a few moments, the old chief Nalik and I started off.
It lay before us with many, many bars of golden sunlight striking down through the trees and trying to penetrate its calm, placid bosom with their warm, loving rays. Far below the sound of the waterfall sung to the dying day, and, as we listened, there came to us the dulled, distant murmur of the combing breakers upon the reef five miles away.
“‘Tis a fair, good place this, is it not?” whispered Nalik, as he sat beside me—“a fair, good place, though it be haunted by the spirits.”
“Aye, a fair, sweet place indeed,” I answered, “and this pool aid the river below shall for ever be in my dreams when I am far away from here.”