anced up and smiled the slow smile of extreme age upon extreme
youth.

"My husband, the police commissioner, has hunted in India more than
twenty years; some of his friends longer than that. I suppose they are
as familiar with the natures and doings of most animals in this country
as foreign hunters can become. But of course the natives know jungle
creatures even better. We have two servants, born in these hills, my
ayah and Bhanah the old cook; I have much from both of them. But my
experience here in this tent, has--as the natives would
say--established it all in me. You will have heard that hyenas are
almost always the scouts for tigers."

"Yes, Mr. Cadman told me that."

"Jackals run with them. The hunters say that between the hyena, whose
stench is beyond description awful, and the jackal, whose stench is
strong dog, they obliterate the tiger smell and so prevent the
desperate panic coming in time to the hunted creatures, who fear the
tiger more than anything."

"Hyenas in captivity do not smell so exceptionally bad."

"One has heard that all flesh-eating animals in captivity are fed clean
meat, reasonably fresh--"

"They are; and for the moment I forgot their reputation--that would
make a difference."

"It is claimed here, that they eat only two kinds of flesh, at
once--human and dog. They say that the hyena entices and betrays to
the killing, the tiger kills and eats his fill, then the jackals come
in and leave only bones and tendon-stuff for the hyena. This is what
he devours as soon as it is old enough to suit his taste."

"Are all these animals here in this jungle?"

"Plenty of jackals; but the tigers have been killed out of all this
part of these Ghats by the European sportsmen of Bombay and Poona. The
hunters disregard hyenas; so there are many left, with no killer to
kill for them."

"That might make them dangerous."

"And they will tell you that when a hyena is forced to kill for
himself, he invariably hunts for a dog. It has become very important
to me that dog flesh is their first choice. And dogs never fight
hyenas; never even to defend their own lives. They may bark or howl
while the hyena is some distance away, but as soon as it comes near
they are silent; and when it approaches them, they simply cower and
submit. Not only that, but it is beyond question that hyenas have the
power to call dogs to them. . . . For five weeks I have been alone in
this tent six nights in every