t hour for the hunt. He would have
chosen the twilight of the evening or morning, and would have hid
himself in the bushes, so as to command a view of the track which the
tapir would be certain to take on his way to or from the water. He
would then have simply shot the creature as it was going past; but this
is not so easy a matter neither, for the tapir, fearful of enemies while
on land, always travels at a trot. As Guapo had neither bow nor gun,
nothing in fact but his _machete_, how was he to get near enough to use
this weapon? Clumsy-looking as the tapir certainly is, he can shuffle
over the ground faster than the fastest Indian.

Guapo knew all this, but he also knew a stratagem by which the
amphibious brute could be outwitted, and this stratagem he designed
putting in practice. For the purpose he carried another weapon besides
the _machete_. That weapon was a very pacific one--it was a _spade_!
Fortunately he had one which he had brought with him from the mountains.

Now what did Guapo mean to do with the spade? The tapir is not a
burrowing animal, and therefore would not require to be "dug out." We
shall presently see what use was made of the spade.

After crossing the bridge, and getting well round among the palms, the
hunter came upon a path well tracked into the mud. It was the path of
the tapir,--that could be easily seen. There were the broad footmarks--
some with three, and others with four toes--and there, too, were places
where the animal had "wallowed." The tracks were quite fresh, and made,
as Guapo said, not an hour before they had arrived on the spot.

This was just what the tapir-hunter wanted; and, choosing a place where
the track ran between two palm-trees, and could not well have gone round
either of them, he halted, rested his _machete_ against a tree, and took
a determined hold of the spade. Leon now began to see what use he
intended to make of the spade. He was _going to dig a pit_!

That was, in fact, the very thing he was going to do, and in less than
an hour, with the help of Leon, it was done--the latter carrying away
the earth upon "bussu" leaves as fast as Guapo shovelled it out. When
the pit was sunk to what Guapo considered a sufficient depth, he came
out of it; and then choosing some slender poles, with palm-leaves,
branches, and grass, he covered it in such a manner that a fox himself
would not have known it to be a pit-trap. But such it was--wide enough
and deep en