thing edible
comes amiss to him, but he prefers chickens and grapes to fallen caravan
animals. If he can find nothing else, he steals dates in the palm
gardens, especially when ripe fruits have fallen after heavy storms.
The jackal is, indeed, a shameless, impudent little rascal. One night a
pack of jackals sneaked into our garden and carried off our only cock
under the very noses of the dogs. We were awakened by the noise of a
terrible struggle between the two forces, but the jackals got the better
of it and we heard the despairing cackle of the cock dying away in the
desert.

Heaven knows where the jackals remain as long as the sun is up! In
zoological text-books it is stated that they dwell in holes, but I could
see no holes round Tebbes, and yet jackals come in troops to the oasis
every night. They are as mysterious as the desert; they are found
everywhere and nowhere.

As soon as the sun sinks below the horizon and the darkness spreads its
veil over the silent desert, and the palms doze off, waiting for the
return of the sun, then begins the jackals' serenade. It sounds like a
short, sharp laugh rising and falling, a plaintive whine increasing in
strength and dying away again, answered by another pack in another
direction; a united cry of anguish from children in trouble and calling
for help. They say to one another, "Comrades, we are hungry, let us seek
about for food," and gather together from their unknown lairs. Then they
steal cautiously to the skirts of the oasis, hop over walls and bars and
thieve on forbidden ground.

These insignificant noisy footpads live on the refuse and offal of the
desert from Cape Verde in the uttermost west of the Old World to the
interior of India; but their home is not in the silent desert alone.
When the military bands strike up at the clubs in Simla, you have only
to put your head out of the window to hear the mournful, piteous, and
distressed howl of the jackals.

They are not always to be treated lightly, for in 1882 jackals killed
359 men in Bengal alone. Especially are they a terrible danger when
hydrophobia rages among them, as the experiences of the last Boundary
Commission in Seistan showed. A mad jackal sneaked into the camp one
night and bit a sleeping man in the face. Within six weeks the man was
dead. Others stole into the natives' huts and lay in ambush, waiting for
an opportunity to bite. Perhaps the worst incident occurred on a dark
winter's night, when a nort