then, my figure
thus accoutred, issuing from under the canvas tent, with a lantern in my
hand. I had not advanced twenty yards, when first only two or three, and
then an immense number of jackals surrounded me. I was at first disposed
to think but lightly of them: but seeing their numbers increase so
rapidly, I grew alarmed, and probably gave way to fear sooner than I
ought. A few shots from the tent would probably have sent them away with
speed, but no one saw me. Every moment they drew closer and closer in a
complete round, and seemed to look at me with determined hunger. For
some moments I remained in a most dreadful state of alarm. It just then
occurred to me that I once heard of a boy who had driven back a bull out
of a field by walking backward on his hands and feet. Fortunate thought!
I caught at the idea; in a moment I was on all fours, with my head as
near the earth as I could keep it, and commenced cutting all the capers
of which I was capable. The jackals, who no doubt had never seen so
strange an animal, first stopped, then retreated, and, as I drew near
the tent, flew in all directions. The men awoke just in time to see my
danger, and have a hearty laugh at me and the jackals."

Our old friend was more fortunate than a certain youth who attempted to
rob an orchard by deluding a fierce bulldog with this approach _a
posteriori,_ but who, to his sorrow, found the dog too knowing, for he
carried to his dying day the marks of the guardian's teeth in that spot
where honor has its seat.

The same quartermaster told us a quaint story of a fright another of the
crew received from these jackals.

While at San Francisco the ship's crew were laying in a store of
provisions; a large tent was erected on shore for salting the meat; the
cooper lived in it, and hung up his hammock at one end. The beef which
had been killed during the day was also hung up all around, in readiness
for salting. One night a large pack of jackals came down from the woods,
and being attracted by the smell of the meat, soon got into the tent,
and pulling at one of the sides of beef, brought it down with a crash,
which woke the old cooper, who was a remarkably stout, and rather
nervous man. Finding himself thus surrounded in the dead of the night by
wild beasts, whose forms and size, dimly seen, were magnified by his
fears, he fired off his musket, and clasping his arms, in an agony of
terror, round a quarter of beef which hung close to his hamm