I had singled out a blow which, caught
upon my sword, very nearly smote it from my hand, and certainly would
have disarmed at once any of my weaker companions. As it was, the
stroke maimed the limb that delivered it; but with its remaining arm
the creature maintained a fight so stubborn that, had both been
available, the issue could not have been in my favour. This conflict
reminded me singularly of an encounter with the mounted swordsmen of
Scindiah and the Peishwah; all my experience of sword-play being
called into use, and my brute opponent using its natural weapon with
an instinctive skill not unworthy of comparison with that of a trained
horse-soldier; at the same time that it constantly endeavoured to
seize with its formidable snout either my own arm or the wing or body
of the caldecta, which, however, was very well able to take care of
itself. In fact, the prey was secured at last not by my sword but by a
blow from the caldecta's beak, which pierced and paralysed the slender
neck of our antagonist. Some twenty thernee formed the booty of a
chase certainly novel, and possessing perhaps as many elements of
peril and excitement as that finest of Earthly sports which the
affected cynicism of Anglo-Indian speech degrades by the name of
"pig-sticking."

When the falcons had been collected and recaged, and the bodies of the
thernee consigned to a carriage brought up for the purpose by a
subordinate who had watched the hunters' course, our birds, from which
we had dismounted, were somewhat rested; and Ergimo informed me that
another and more formidable, as well as more valuable, prey was
thought to be in sight a few miles off. Mounted on a fresh bird, and
resolutely closing my ears to his urgent and reasonable dissuasion, I
joined the smaller party which was detached for this purpose. As we
were carried slowly at no great distance from the ground, managing our
birds with ease by a touch on either side of the neck--they are
spurred at need by a slight electric shock communicated from the hilt
of the sword, and are checked by a forcible pressure on the wings--I
asked Ergimo why the thernee were not rather shot than hunted, since
utility, not sport, governs the method of capturing the wild beasts of
Mars.

"We have," he replied, "two weapons adapted to strike at a distance.
The asphyxiator is too heavy to be carried far or fast, and pieces of
the shell inflict such injuries upon everything in the immediate
neighbourhood