of visitation by some creature with a taste
for sweets. The neighborhood, I ascertained, was infested with wild
hogs. In the afternoon I surveyed the fields adjoining the sugar-cane,
and made my dispositions against night. The moon was at the full. As
soon as it rose I took my rifle and repaired to a position selected
with reference to a certain tree. This tree had a low--but not too
low--horizontal branch, strong enough, as proved by experiment, to
bear my weight. Presently, an unmistakable concert of snorting and
grunting announced the approach of swine. I picked out their fugleman,
a well-grown boar, and fired. He was only wounded, and immediately
gave chase after me. I might discharge my second barrel at him, but
suppose I should miss? Perched out of his reach, I might miss him
with impunity, and load again. All this I had pondered beforehand. So
I started for my tree, which I reached some ten seconds sooner than
the boar, swung myself up on its low branch, and there took my seat.
The boar rushed furiously to and fro, raging like the heathen of the
Psalmist, and also, like the Psalmist's people--not a well-ordered
democracy like ours, of course--imagining a vain thing. Again and
again he quixotically charged the bole of the tree, no doubt thinking
it to be myself in a new shape. A fine classical boar he must have
been, with his poetic faith in instantaneous metamorphosis. His
classicality, however, what with his unmannerly savageness and my own
suspension between heaven and earth, I did not feel bound to respect.
So, without the slightest emotion of sentimentality, I put a ball
through his head.

Let us now hark back to the blue-cow, beautiful and breathless.
Satisfied, for the nonce, with my prowess in laying it low, I plunged
into the forest, just to explore. I must have rambled several miles,
when I suddenly came upon an impervious barrier of quickset. Following
its course a little way, I found that it curved, and at one point I
espied through it a broad ditch filled with water, and a wall beyond.
By and by I reached a gap in the barrier, and a drawbridge leading up
to a large gate. I crossed the bridge, knocked at the gate, parleyed
with an invisible porter, and was admitted. My visit was evidently
viewed with a mixture of dislike and suspicion, but with no sign of
alarm when it was seen that I was really unaccompanied, as, while
still outside, I had said I was. Looking around, I perceived that I
was in a subs