There exist, nevertheless, old and evil-tempered boars that are quite formidable adversaries. We have many such in our Coto Doñana--boars that, having once overmastered our hounds, practically defy us. Each of these old solitary tuskers occupies some densely briared stronghold--it may be but an isolated patch of jungle, scarce half an acre in extent, or alternatively, a little sequence of similar thickets, each connected by intervals of lighter bush. Such spots abound by the hundred, but once the lair of our bristled friend is found, then there is work cut out for man, horse, and hound. For long-drawn-out minutes the silence of the wilderness re-echoes with doubly concentrated fury--frantic hound-music mingled with lower accompaniment of sullen, savage snorts and grunts and the champing of tusks; then a sharp crunch of breaking boughs ... and the death-yell of a _podenco_ tells that _that_ blow has got home. But the seat of war remains unchanged--the same rush and the same fatal result are repeated. Presently some venturous hound may discover an entry from behind. The enemy's flank is turned, and with a crash that seems to shake the very earth, our boar retreats to a second stronghold only twenty yards away. All this is occurring within arm's length; one hears, can almost feel, the stress of mortal combat, but one sees nothing inside the mural foliage, nor knows what moment the enemy may sally forth. Such moments may even excite what are termed in Spanish phrase "emotions." In his second "Plevna" our boar is secure, and he knows it. With rear and flanks protected by a _revêtement_ of gnarled roots and a labyrinth of stems, he fears nothing behind, while the furiously baying hounds on his front he now utterly despises. Blank shots fired in the air alarm him not, nor will Pepe Espinal--in a service of danger--succeed in dislodging him with a _garrocha_, after a perilous climb along the briar-matted roof. That boar is victor--master of a stricken field. One human resource remains, to go in _á arma blanca_--with the cold steel. There are dashing spirits who will do this--in Spain we have seen such. But to crawl thus, prostrate, into the dark and gloomy tunnels that form a wild-boar's fortress, intercepted and obstructed on every side, there to attack in single combat a savage beast, still unhurt and in the flush of victory, pachydermatous, and whose fighting weight far exceeds your own--well, _that_ we place in the category of pure recklessness. Courage is a quality that all admire, though one may wonder if it is not sometimes over-esteemed, when we find it possessed in common, not only by very many wild-beasts, but even by savage races of human kind--races which we regard as "lower," yet not inferior in that cherished quality of "pluck."