er or not it was the same leopard we had seen in the afternoon, I
could not tell. The creature moved on in its cat-like fashion, looking
cautiously around. Charley and I kept ourselves well concealed, still
it apparently suspected that an enemy was near. It got directly in
front of us. If Charley missed I must, I knew, take care to bring it
down, for if not, it would make nothing of a bound over the tree, and
would carry one of us off. Charley levelled his rifle; a sharp crack
was heard ringing through the night air, answered by the chattering of
numberless monkeys and the shrieks of flocks of parrots and other birds.
The smoke for a moment prevented me seeing the leopard; the next
instant, what was my horror to observe it approaching. In another
instant it would have been upon us. I fired; it leapt high in the air,
and rolled over close to the trunk of the tree.

"Well done, Dick!" cried Charley. "I hit it, but my bullet missed the
vital part."

The leopard was perfectly dead. We easily found the two bullet-holes.
Charley's bullet had struck the edge of a bone, and been slightly
deflected. Had he been alone, the result might have been fatal to him.
How thankful I felt that he had escaped! It was a lesson to us never to
go out hunting singly, and we agreed that we would keep to that rule.

The leopard had fallen just under the bough of a tree, and as we were
anxious to preserve its skin, and yet did not wish to spend time in
flaying the animal that night, we resolved to try and hoist it up to the
bough, where it would remain safe till the morning. We accordingly cut
a number of vines which grew near, and under Charley's directions formed
a series of tackles, by means of which we succeeded, all hoisting
together, in lifting it several feet off the ground. This done, we
returned to our camp. While we had been thus engaged, we had run the
risk, I suspect, of being attacked by another wild beast, either a
leopard or lion, as when I was on watch I heard the mutterings of the
last-named savage brutes in the distance. As I walked up and down in
front of our fire while my brother and Harry were asleep, I watched the
body of the leopard swinging in the air a few feet off, and kept my gun
on the cock ready to fire should a lion approach, as I thought would
very likely be the case, although I had no particular wish to have
another battle that night. However, it so happened that we were left at
rest. At early daw