noisy
coolies, come floating down in bursts of clamour on the soft morning
air. The din waxes and wanes as the excited beaters descry a 'sounder'
of pig ahead; with a mighty roar that makes your blood tingle, the
frantic coolies rally for the final burst. Like rockets from a tube,
the boar and his progeny come crashing through the brake, and separate
before you on the plain. With a wild cheer you dash after them in hot
pursuit; no time now to think of pitfalls, banks, or ditches; your
gallant steed strains his every muscle, every sense is on the alert,
but you see not the bush and brake and tangled thicket that you leave
behind you. Your eye is on the dusky glistening hide and the stiff
erect bristles in front; the shining tusks and foam-flecked chest are
your goal, and the wild excitement culminates as you feel your keen
steel go straight through muscle, bone, and sinew, and you know that
another grisly monster has fallen. As you ease your girths and wipe
your heated brow, you feel that few pleasures of the chase come up to
the noblest, most thrilling sport of all, that of pig-sticking.

The plain is alive with shouting beaters hurrying up to secure the gory
carcase of the slaughtered foe. A riderless horse is far away, making
off alone for the distant grove, where the snowy tents are glistening
through the foliage. On the distant horizon a small cluster of eager
sportsmen are fast overhauling another luckless tusker, and enjoying in
all their fierce excitement the same sensations you have just
experienced. Now is the time to enjoy the soothing weed, and quaff the
grateful 'peg'; and as the syces and other servants come up in groups
of twos and threes, you listen with languid delight to all their
remarks on the incidents of the chase; and as, with their acute
Oriental imagination nations they dilate in terms of truly Eastern
exaggeration on your wonderful pluck and daring, you almost fancy
yourself really the hero they would make you out to be.

Then the reunion round the festive board at night, when every one again
lives through all the excitement of the day. Talk of fox-hunting after
pig-sticking, it is like comparing a penny candle to a lighthouse, or a
donkey race to the 'Grand National'!

Peeprah Factory with its many patches of jungle, its various lakes and
fine undulating country, was another favourite rendezvous for the
votaries of pig-sticking. The house itself was quite palatial, built on
the bank of a lo