Pepe Ratto soon recovered himself.

[Illustration:  SELLING GRAIN IN MOGADOR]

“Yes,” he said, in reply to my unspoken thoughts, “one seldom sees country like this anywhere else.  But the boar went this way.”

So saying, the hunter uppermost again, he wheeled round, and we followed the stream quite slowly while he looked on either hand for signs of the large tusker.  “We must find where he has settled,” he continued.  “Now the weather is getting so warm he will move to some place that is sandy and moist, within reach of the puddles he has chosen to wallow in.  And he won’t go far from this part, because the maize is not yet ripe.”

“Do they grow maize in this province?” I asked.

“Yes,” replied the hunter.  “I give the farmers the seed and they plant it, for a boar is as fond of green maize as a fox is of chickens.”  He paused and showed me the marks of a herd that had come to the water within the past two days to drink and wallow.  While I could see the marks of many feet, he could tell me all about the herd, the approximate numbers, the ages, and the direction they were taking.  Several times we dismounted, and he examined the banks very carefully until, at the fourth or fifth attempt, tracks that were certainly larger than any we had seen revealed the long-sought tusker.

We went through the wood, the hunter bending over a trail lying too faint on the green carpet of the forest for me to follow.  We moved over difficult ground, often under the blaze of the African sun, and, intent upon the pursuit, noted neither the heat nor the flight of time.  For some two miles of the dense scrub, the boar had gone steadily enough until the ground opened into a clearing, where the soil was sandy and vegetation correspondingly light.  Here at last the track moved in a circle.

“See,” said the hunter, a suspicion of enthusiasm in his tone, “he has been circling; that means he is looking for a lair.  Stay here, if you will, with the horses while I follow him home.”  And in a minute he was out of sight.

I waited patiently enough for what seemed a long time, trying to catch the undersong that thrilled through the forest, “the horns of elf-land faintly blowing,” the hum such as bees at home make when late May sees the chestnut trees in flower.  Here the song was a veritable psalm of life, in which every tree, bird, bush, and insect had its own part to play.  It might have been a primeval forest; even the horses were grazing quietly, as though their spirits had succumbed to the solemn influences around us.  The great god Pan himself could not have been far away, and I felt that he might have shown himself—­that it was fitting indeed for him to appear in such a place and at such a season.

The hunter came back silently as he had gone.

[Illustration:  SELLING ORANGES]