So I glanced up above and behind me. To this moment I
can remember exactly what I saw. There was the granite water-worn
boulder, or rather several boulders, with ferns growing in their
cracks of the maiden-hair tribe, most of them, but some had a silver
sheen on the under side of their leaves. On one of these leaves,
bending it down, sat a large beetle with red wings and a black body
engaged in rubbing its antenn? with its front paws. And above, just
appearing over the top of the rock, was the head of an extremely fine
leopard. As I write to seem to perceive its square jowl outlined
against the arc of the quiet evening sky with the saliva dropping from
its lips.
This was the last thing which I did perceive for a little while, since
at that moment the leopard--we call them tigers in South Africa--
dropped upon my back and knocked me flat as a pancake. I presume that
it also had been stalking the buck and was angry at my appearance on
the scene. Down I went, luckily for me, into a patch of mossy soil.
"All up!" I said to myself, for I felt the brute's weight upon my back
pressing me down among the moss, and what was worse, its hot breath
upon my neck as it dropped its jaws to bite me in the head.
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