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 _à 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 hammock, was found perfectly senseless by an officer who came to see the cause of the alarm. Some difficulty was experienced in getting him to relinquish his hold of the beef--which he stuck to like a Briton--and it was several days before his nerves recovered from the shock of the fright.