THE INTERRUPTED DUEL.

Cromwell Argus, Volume L, Issue 2648, 17 November 1919, Page 7

THE INTERRUPTED DUEL.

A VIVID SKETCH OF WILD LIFE IN THE JUNGLE. By F. St. Mars. He was a beauty ! Silky, bluey coat ; (long, dew lap ; slender legs ; tall as a horse ; long-horned, spiral as to their lower portion ; gentle eyed; silken-muzzled, kindly, and heavy as an ox, and yet so nimble that he could leap over the backs of his tallest wives from a standing take-off and land on the other side almost without a sound. Men called him an' antelope, the giant of all, the eland. And he was standing in a clearing among the tall, sun-dap-pled mimosa, contentedly chewing the cud, and watching the'harem he had won for himself by battle, and battle again.

An hour passed, and the utter silence —which the continuous hum of thousands upon thousands of insects did not break but merely accentuated —was suddenly cut in two by the snap of a dead twig, magnified, like unto a pistol-shot. And it had not ceased before every eland was on its feet, '-frozen," head facing the sound, tense like a set spring.

But it was not fear that came that way, for, strangely difficult to pick out, winding in and out among the interminable thorn-scrub—five different kinds, hooked thorn and straight skewers five or six inches long—in Indian file, wound a herd of horsey zebras heading towards them.

The elands saw, and took no further notice. They knew the zebrathere were thousands of them thereabouts. The little horses with foot' ball jerseys on.

Only when the leader of the striped hand—a fine, fat old stallion—sauntered, ears flat, yellow teeth bared, and biting right and left, in among them to the most shady spot, did the old bull eland get up and speak—one peculiar, rumbling grunt. The zebra stallion said "Qwa-ha-ha !" and came straight at him. The eland got his head well down. The zebra was much smaller than he, and • easy money, if The double clean thud, neatly planted on the eland's neck, sounded clearly a hundred or more yards away as the old stallion, seeing the danger, spun like a top and kicked full and square with his hind hoofs. The amazed eland staggered, and put i his head up, and the next two kicks caught him before he could move almost fairly on the ribs. Then it was his turn to blunder out into the open sun, and be glad to get there. Glad ? Ay, he was still standing in the blaze, dazed and winded, when without sign sound or warning, • two things happened before his very eyes in one and the same moment. The whole zebra herd, except the old stallion, reared, with a single snort, on end, and thudded deafeningly clear of the trees, and a great yellow shape appeared, as if by magic, from nowhere, upon the Zebra stallion's back, and the fine, striped old chap collapsed, without a 1 sound, in a heap to the ground, as if poleaxed. And in the time it takes you to draw one long breath, the place was empty. Only a crashing, dwindling among the sinister, mysterious thorn-* scrub, told what had been, and there was left only the old, heavy-mained lion, standing above the dead zebra stallion. He had been stalking the bull eland as he lay chewing the cud for half an hour, and it was not his fault if the zebra had foolishly taken the other's place just at the moment he had made his rush.

The hoary-headed examiner glanced over the top of his spectacles. "Are you sure," he inquired, "that this is a purely original composition you have handed in ?" "Yes, sir," came the answer, "But you may possibly, sir, have come across one or two of the words in the dictionary.^

"Society finds its level in a tubr railway carriage, doesn't it ?" "Well, it shows how many people who think themselves in good stand-, ing are merely hangers-on {"-