On the next day the pig hunt was started. The wild pig of New Guinea, _Sus papuana_, is in several respects peculiar to himself. Armed with those long tusks that the natives use for nose ornaments and breast shields, he is wild, long legged, and speedy as a deer. He has the typical Asiatic screw tail, in place of the long straight one of the wild boar of Europe, but is almost hairless and provided with thick horny shoulder plates under the skin that will turn almost any bullet. Like all pigs, he fights well when cornered, is very tenacious of life, and attacks with a slashing charge of his tusks, attempting to upset a man with his momentum and then turn and rend out his ribs with a powerful stroke of the long, sharp tushes. Baderoon and Sadok disappeared into the jungle to get above their feeding ground and act as beaters, while the curator and the boys took up vantage points a short distance back from the creek in the swampy bottoms. Dwight soon found himself alone under the tall foliage, with vines and creepers crisscrossing in front of him and dense undergrowth, making it impossible to see thirty feet away, all around him. Great, slippery roots buttressed out from the tree trunks, crawling over the muddy soil like alligator backs. Nicky and the curator were farther on down the creek, both as silent as the grave, for it was essential to make no noise. Dwight realized that he had been given the post of honor this time, and that it would be he who would bear the brunt of the charge. In spite of himself he found himself shivering with excitement, opening his gun to peer at the shells, setting the safety on and off, and otherwise betraying symptoms that looked very like fear. He had never hunted wild boar before, and he found himself wishing that he had a bayonet or a spear or something to defend himself at close quarters. As it was, he would have to depend entirely on steady nerves and a well-placed bullet. Then, far up the jungle, he heard the distant noises of the infernal din that Sadok and Baderoon were making, yelling and beating with their spears on their shields. It was followed presently by faint squeals, and later he could hear the grunts, it seemed, of a whole drove of wild boars. They were coming like the wind, the undergrowth crackling under their hoofs, vines tearing and ripping and carrying away bush growth, and then the jungle floor fairly shook, as if locomotives were thundering down on him. A swishing and waving in the undergrowth showed him that they would pass him about thirty yards off, between him and the creek. Dwight sternly repressed an impulse to hang back and let them go by. To see clearly to shoot, he would have to run forward and plant himself nearly in their path.