A couple of days later, we went out shooting. We passed by tea gardens, rice fields, and grass plains; we left the village behind us and went in the direction of the river, and came into forests of strange foreign trees, bamboo and mango, tamarind, teak and salt trees, oil--and gum-bearing plants--Heaven knows what they all were; we had, between us, but little knowledge of the things. But there was very little water in the river, and so it remained until the rainy season. We shot wild pigeons and partridges, and saw a couple of panthers one afternoon; parrots, too, flew over our heads. Glahn was a terribly accurate shot; he never missed. But that was merely because his gun was better than mine; many times I too shot terribly accurately. I never boasted of it, but Glahn would often say: “I'll get that fellow in the tail,” or “that one in the head.” He would say that before he fired; and when the bird fell, sure enough, it was hit in the tail or the head as he had said. When we came upon the two panthers, Glahn was all for attacking them too with his shot-gun, but I persuaded him to give it up, as it was getting dusk, and we had no more than two or three cartridges left. He boasted of that too--of having had the courage to attack panthers with a shot-gun. “I am sorry I did not fire at them after all,” he said to me. “What do you want to be so infernally cautious for? Do you want to go on living?” “I'm glad you consider me wiser than yourself,” I answered. “Well, don't let us quarrel over a trifle,” he said. Those were his words, not mine; if he had wished to quarrel, I for my part had no wish to prevent him. I was beginning to feel some dislike for him for his incautious behavior, and for his manner with women. Only the night before, I had been walking quietly along with Maggie, the Tamil girl that was my friend, and we were both as happy as could be. Glahn sits outside his hut, and nods and smiles to us as we pass. It was then that Maggie saw him for the first time, and she was very inquisitive about him. So great an impression had he made on her that, when it was time to go, we went each our own way; she did not go back home with me. Glahn would have put this by as of no importance when I spoke to him about it. But I did not forget it. And it was not to me that he nodded and smiled as we passed by the hut! it was to Maggie. “What's that she chews?” he asked me. “I don't know,” I answered. “She chews--I suppose that's what her teeth are for.”