Chapter 14

For a few seconds there followed an awful struggle--great wings beating mightily downwards, beak hammering, and fangs meeting the hammerings with audible clashings. It seemed that the bird could not quite lift the beast, and that the beast could not quite retain connection with solid earth.

And then the bird rose, slowly, strainingly, with her vast pinions winnowing the air with deep "how-hows!" Like mighty fans rose she, still gripping the struggling polecat hard by the back in a locked clutch of steel--up and up, and out over the estuary, growing slowly from a great bird to a medium-sized one, to a smaller, and a smaller, all the time fighting, it seemed, like a mad creature, to gain the upper air, to climb to the clouds, as a drowning man fights his way upwards in the water. And there was reason--the old polecat's jaws were fast shut in a vise-grip, as of a Yale lock, upon her throat.

Never a sound broke the silence that brooded forever--in spite of the wind--over the lake-like, flattened expanse of the estuary save the deep "how-how!" of the buzzard's superb pinions as she climbed slowly into the sublime vault of the heavens; never a sound from bird or from beast. The beast hung on, dumbly dogged, with fangs that met in the flesh beneath the stained feathers; and the blood of the bird mingled with the blood of the beast as it trickled slowly down over his mangled head, upon which one fearful claw of the buzzard was clutched in an awful grip.

The bird struggled dumbly also, upwards, ever upwards, gasping, with open beak and staring eyes, fighting vainly for the breath she could not draw, till at last the two were no more than a speck--one little, dark, indefinite speck, floating athwart the great, piled, fleecy mountains of the clouds.

And then, quite suddenly, so suddenly that it was almost like pricking a bladder, the end came. The magnificent, overshadowing pinions collapsed; the bird reeled, toppled for an instant in the void, and then slid back and down, faster and faster and faster, turning over and over, in one long, sickening dive back to earth.

A watcher, had there been one, might have seen, just as the last rays of the setting sun touched the steely reaches of the estuary, turning them to lakes of crimson, something, somebody--or bodies, truly, for they were locked together--suddenly appear, streaking down headlong from out the heavens. There followed a single terrific splash far out over the tide, an upheaval of waters, a succession of ripples hurrying outwards, ever outwards, to tell the tale, and then--nothing.

Next morning, as the sun rose, a party of mournfully shrieking black-backed, herring, common, and black-headed gulls were gathered around the soaked and bedraggled carcasses of a polecat and a buzzard, stranded by the falling tide upon a mud spur, and still locked savagely and implacably in death.

Half a mile away, in the darkness of her burrow, the she-polecat stirred uneasily in her sleep, and, waking for a moment, stared out at the still, silent, secret marshes, wondering, perhaps, why her mate had not returned.

And ten miles away, far up in their great nest among the boughs of a mighty Scotch fir, three downy, but already fierce-eyed, buzzard nestlings craned their necks upwards, calling hungrily, and wondering why their mother had not returned; while their father shot and swerved backwards and forwards over the tree-tops, mewing and calling, uneasily and lonelily, to the clouds for his wife, who had so mysteriously disappeared. And so--fate and the end.

This only remains to be said--the female polecat and the male buzzard did, in spite of Fate, manage to rear their young. And if the gamekeeper and the collector, the sportsman and the farmer, have not been too cruel, those young are alive-to-day.

XII

THE FURTIVE FEUD

There was a sun. You could not see it much because of burning, dancing haze, but you could not get anywhere without feeling it. Almost everything you touched--sand, rock, and such like--blistered you; and the vegetation, where it wasn't four-inch thorns and six-inch spikes and bloated cacti, was shriveled yellow-brown, like the color of a lion. Perhaps it was a lion, some of it. How could one tell?

Lizards, which were bad; and scorpions, which were worse; and snakes, which were worse than worse, lay about in the sun, as if they were pieces of leather drying. You could not see them--which was awkward, for some of them held a five-minute death up their sleeve--partly because they matched their surroundings, partly because they were still. They were colored burnt to hide in a burnt land.

Yet it was possible to be bright and gay and unobtrusive in this place, too--if you were cold-blooded enough not to boil dry and explode before getting a drink--for under some trees lay, in the old-gold, yellow, black-shade-streaked, tawny-red grass, a sleek and glistening, banded, blotched, and spotted, newly painted python. Yes, sirs, a python snake; and you couldn't see it in its new levee uniform--the old one lay not fifty yards away--any more than you could see the other, and plainly attired, bad dreams--so long as it did not move. Its length was not apparent, because it was coiled up; but it would have uncoiled out into something most alarming if stretched, I fancy.

The jackal made no sound as he came, tripping daintily, graceful and light as a rubber ball, into the scene, blissfully oblivious, apparently, of the fact that any other next step might awake a volcano under his feet.

He was a black-backed jackal; red-tawny sides, fading to nearly white under-parts; black back, grizzled with white hairs, neatly ruled off from the rest of him, like a big saddle; large, wide-awake ears; long, thin legs; bushy tail; very knowing eyes, and all complete--part wolf, part fox, and yet neither and something of both. No one living could, perhaps, have been agile enough to measure him, but he looked over two and a half feet from nose-tip to tail-root; and you can add, possibly, a third of that for the tail. But he was all there, whatever his length, every short hair of him, and none of the swarms of buzzing flies around seemed anxious to settle upon him.

He picked his way across to the shade of the trees, slouching quite casually, apparently; though how he avoided treading upon any of the sudden deaths variously thrown about seems a mystery. And just short of the shade of the trees he stopped. He had spotted, or scented--the latter is most likely, for the smell beat a chemical-works, a slaughter-house, and a whaleship rolled into one--the big snake.

The big snake remained motionless, and made no sign. Goodness knows whether it was asleep, if snakes ever do sleep. It certainly had its horrible eyes open, fixed in an evil stare at anything, or nothing, after the fashion of snakes, who are cursed in that they cannot shut their eyes to things. (Imagine the position of some people in this world if they were afflicted like the snakes!)

For about a minute that jackal stood like a carved beast in wood, with the original bark left on his back. Then he began to sink, slowly, gradually, till he lay as flat as a punctured bladder. And the picture of that little black-backed fellow--that _Canis mesomelas_, if you like official terms--all alone there, and surrounded by a dozen deaths at least, and all nasty, doing the stalking act upon that python was great. He stalked. My! how he stalked! And with reason, for he was taking on, perhaps, the biggest thing in the hunting line that he had ever tackled, and it was a million to one that, if he did not win, he died, and horribly, too; and he knew it. Ordinarily he would have been the python's prey.

There was a little snicker, as it were, in the air as his fangs closed, and the python, waking one-twentieth of a second too late, lifted its head. Then, short and crisp--snap!

Talk about tweaking a lightning-flash by its tail! It would have been a wake to what followed then.

The jackal knew what to expect--by instinct, I suppose. Anyway, he did not wait longer than it takes to scrunch as hard as possible with canine teeth as sharp as knives, and leap clear.

Ho did it, however, and stood well back, with his ears cocked and his head on one side. It was as if he were panting, "Now, let her rip"--and she did.

A hurricane in a cage, a volcano in an eligible house-lot, a geyser in a water-jug--what you will; but they were all tame alongside that python, after the little black-back had got his fangs home.

You know the size of pythons? 'Bout the biggest things in snakes there are going, bar two; and this one was not a baby. But nobody can properly measure their strength. This one unwrapped itself in one awful swiftness, and wrapped itself up again more awfully swiftly and in worse knots. Then things became hazy, and one could only tell by the dust, and the sand, and the grass, and the leaves, and the other things flying around that something was happening.

But the jackal did not seem to care. He only sat well back, with jaws open and very red tongue lolling, obviously doing a dog-laugh to himself. Perhaps it touched his sense of humor to think that so small a beast as he, with just one scientific bite, should create such a deal of disturbance. But the--er--aroma could not have amused even him, and he was, as you might say, salted to stenches; for, though he was on the up-wind side, even there it was enough to knock flat anything that the python's tail could not reach. It was a most stupendous stench--a sort of weapon of defense, or danger-signal, that these big snakes have.

Now, perhaps it was the reek that drew the purr. Purring is generally looked upon as a nice and comfy sort of a sound, but _this was not_.

The jackal just heard it intruding upon the confusion of the python's last contortions, as if suddenly, and it seemed to come from the ground, and the sky, and the surrounding scenery all at the same time. There was nothing nice and comfy about it at all. The jackal removed himself, at sound of it, about four yards in as many bounds, and every grizzled scrap of fur along his black back stood on end. If we had heard it, we should have reached for our rifle, and felt tingly all down our spine, for that was the sort of purr it was--a horrible, hungry, suggestive, cruel, and blood-curdling sound of ghoulish pleasure.

The jackal ceased to dog-laugh, and his tail was between his legs, for he knew that purr, and its name was death. Death angry is bad enough, but death pleased--

Louder and louder the purr became, till it seemed, as the python began to lash out the very last of its life, apparently, to fill the whole place. Finally, it became real, and--a shape walked slowly out of a thorn-bush.

It would be blatant exaggeration to call that shape a lion. It--he--had been one. He was now a walking hat-rack. Never have you seen such a lion. Never had the jackal seen such a lion, even; and he had done business--of the snatch-and-run order--with lions all his life.

However many years that lion had lived, to kill mercilessly, Heaven alone knows; but how on earth he had contrived to avoid for some time being equally mercilessly killed by hyenas, or wild hogs, Heaven and himself alone knew, too. He was a very, very old lion, a derelict of a lion, a shadow of a ghost of one, mangy, tottering, toothless--come down to eat snakes killed by others, even by jackals.

Then the jackal went away, dejected and disgusted. He was honestly proud of his slaying of that python.

It was the biggest screw-up of courage he had ever accomplished in his life, and to be done out of his rewarding big feast by that purring skeleton of a king of beasts! It was too much even for his pessimistic philosophy.

"Yaaa-ya-ya-ya-ya!" he howled, with his nose pointed to the brazen sun, and melted away among the accursed thorn-scrub with a look about him that said, as plainly as words, "And that's what comes of hunting in daylight."

The jackal, after a long skirmish and a drink, retired homewards towards sunset, when suddenly, from a tuft of grass ahead of him, a shadow shot and vanished. He picked up the trail at once, diagnosed it as that of a hare, and gave chase.

It was a fine chase, characterized by every aspect of first-class trailing, and carried along at such a speed that the quarry never got a chance to stop and get its second wind. Indeed, the quarry never had a chance to stop at all, until it was stopped, and the manner of that happening was strange.

Whether designedly driven, or whether by chance, one cannot tell, but the fact remains that the hare took a "line of country" which, if persisted in, would lead her close past the jackal's lair, or, rather, his wife's lair. This was important--for the jackal.

Once, indeed, our hunter all but overran a small--but quite big enough--boa-constrictor, which must have aimed to drop from a tree upon the hare passing below, and missed. It was in an even more evil temper, in consequence, than snakes usually are, and struck at the jackal with its head and shut mouth. The jackal quietly side-stepped, snapped, missed, and made off after his quarry, and about five hundred yards farther on he came up with "puss"--dead.

The jackal sat on his bushy tail, stuck out his fore-feet straight, and stopped as quickly as ever he could. Then he snarled, and full right had he to snarl.

The hare was lying on her back, weakly kicking out the last of her life with her hindlegs, and a stocky, short-nosed, evil, leering, side-striped jackal was standing over her. _He_ had done the deed. And our black-back knew that side-stripe, had met him before. The two families lived only a few hundred yards apart, and it was Mrs. Side-stripe who was responsible for our friend's wife's crippled condition at that moment. This was a typical side-striper, one of the creeping, hunting-by-surprise-and-pounce sort, and it may be that he had never run down any prey worth speaking about in his life. In a way, he was the very opposite from our black-back, who was mostly legs, and a bit of a sportsman, and, I believe, really delighted in a good ringing hunt. Wherefore there was not much cause for surprise at the bitter blood-feud that had gradually grown up between them, till now things had come pretty well to a head.

The other beast folded back his lean upper-lip till his teeth glistened, and grinned at him--a menacing grin. I don't know if he guessed that it was, by all the laws of the chase, the black-back's hare, but he knew that he had pounced upon her as she passed--pounced like a cat, as was his way, what time he was profiting by his enemy's absence to keep that enemy's lame wife indoors, and from hunting even for insects or fruit, by prowling round her lair, and threatening her with growls. Perhaps he had designs upon her puppies. Perhaps his wife had. And perhaps Mrs. Mesomelas knew that. It is difficult to tell.

There was a sort of a blackish-tawny line drawn to the side-stripe--whose other and learned name was Adustus--and back. It scarcely seemed possible that the black-backed little chap had moved, but he had--leaped in and out again, chopping wickedly with a sword-like gleam of fangs as he did so. The other pivoted, quick as thought, and counter-slashed, and, before you could wink, Mesomelas was in and away, in and out, once, twice, and again. One bite sent a little flick of the other's brown fur a-flying; one missed, one got home, and the side-stripe's ugly snarling changed to a yap to say so.

Twice the two beasts whirled round and round, like roulette-balls, the black-back always on the outside, always doing the attacking, dancing as if on air, light as a gnat. Once he got right in, and the foe sprang at his throat. He was not there when the enemy's teeth closed, but his fangs were, and fang closed on fang, and the resulting tussle was not pretty to behold.

Mesomelas cleared himself from that scrunch with very red lips, but never stopped his whirling, light-cavalry form of attack. He was trying to tease the other into dashing after him, and giving up the advantage which his foe had in size and strength, but it was no good; and finally Adustus suddenly scurried into cover, redder than he had been, and our black-back, too, had to bolt for his hole, as an aardwolf, clumsy, hyena-like, and cowardly, but strong enough for them, scenting blood, came up to investigate.

Mercifully, the side-stripe seemed to attract the more attention, or shed the more blood, and while the aardwolf was sniffing at his hole--not intending to do anything if the jackal had a snap left in him, which he had, for the aardwolf possessed the heart of a sheep, really--the black-back managed to dash out and abscond to his hole with the hare. When the aardwolf came back, and sniffed out what he had done, he said things.

Our jackal's head appeared at his hole next dawn as a francolin began to call, and a gray lowrie--a mere shadow up among the branches--started to call out, "Go away! go away!" as if he were speaking to the retreating night. A gay, orange-colored bat came and hung up above the jackal's den--well out of reach, of course--and a ground-hornbill suddenly started his reverberating "Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!" and, behold--'twas dawn!

The jackal scuttled down to the river to have a drink, which he got rather riskily among the horns of drinking, congregated hartebeests, impala, and other antelope, and returned with the leg-bone of a bush-buck, which had been slain the night before by a leopard, and he went to ground very quickly, for the great spotted cat could be heard, grunting wrath, at his heels.

Then the day strode up, and the light, creeping in, showed our jackal, curled up and fast asleep, in his lair, as far away as he could possibly get in the space--two ant-bears', or aardvarks', holes run into one--from his also curled-up wife.

Later--for it was quite chilly--he came out to sleep in the sun, under a bush, till the sun, in turn, half-baked him, and he retired again to the den.

The days were, as a rule, for the jackal, a succession of sleeping blanks, but at the end of this day it was the fate of a small python--small for a python--to hunt a pangolin--who was as like a thin pineapple with a long tail, if you understand me, as it was like anything, or like a fir-cone many times enlarged, only it was an animal, and a weird one--into that den of thieves.

Mrs. Mesomelas, she appeared to shoot straight from dreamless slumber on to the pangolin's back in some wonderful way, and Mr. Mesomelas, he bounced from the arms of Morpheus into--the jaws of the snake? No, sirs; on to the nape of that snake's neck, if snakes may be said to have napes to their necks. But to get hold of the neck of a python is one thing, to keep there quite a different, and very risky, affair; and our jackal, who was no pup, knew that. If that legless creation of the devil could only have got his tail round something, our jackal might have been turned into food for his food, so to speak. Wherefore, possibly, he was frightened. It was like taking hold of a live wire by the loose end. Moreover, the space was confined, and there were the whelps and all, and I rather fancy black-back was more frightened to leave go and stay than he was to hold on and run.

Anyway, he held on and ran.

An old, fat zebra stallion, round-barreled and half-asleep, snorted suddenly, and stared with surprise at the sight of a black-backed jackal galloping as fast as circumstances would permit him, with the wide-mouthed head of a python in his jaws, and the remaining long, painted body trailing out behind. The snake was not going with any pleasure, and his wriggling tail was feeling for a hold every inch of the way, and if he could have got one--oh, jackal! But he could not, for the jackal kept on going, and the snake's after-length kept on trailing out straight, like a loose rope behind a boat, through the perishing glare and the heat-flurry that seemed to be making the whole world jump up and down, as it does when you look at it over the top of a locomotive-funnel.

Snakes take a long time to die, or to _seem_ dead, even with a double set of glistening sharp teeth scrunching as hard as their owner knows how into their neck. At last, however, after a final series of efforts to get, and keep, in the shape of a letter S, the python's tail gradually ceased to feel for a hold, and the writhing strain in the jackal's jaws relaxed. Still, our Mesomelas was taking no chances, and he galloped home with his capture before he stopped, as proud and happy an old dog, rascally jackal as ever cracked a bone on a fine day.

He was a little puffed, and more than a little puffed up, and it may have been that he did not keep his eyes all round his head, as a jackal should always do. Anyway, there, in the gathering shadows of night, came a waiting, watching shadow, that was presently joined by another, and the two--their eyes glinted once in a nasty metallic fashion--stood head to head, watching him.

By the time Mrs. Mesomelas had hobbled out to view the "kill" for herself, and snarl her appreciation--truly, it was a strange way of showing it--with thin, wicked ears laid back, and more than wicked fangs bared, the waiting, watching shadows had crept forward a little, on their bellies, head up, and--Mrs. Mesomelas, with the quick suspicion of motherhood awake in her, saw them.

The snarl that she whipped out fetched the jackal round upon himself as if stung. Then he saw, and understood, and rage flamed into his intelligent, dog's eyes. It was the side-striped jackals, Mr. and Mrs., plotting to loot his "kill."

It was the black-back who attacked. Perhaps he knew that one secret of defense is swift and unexpected offense. Anyway, he attacked, sailing in with his dancy, chopping, in-and-out skirmishing methods; and Mrs. Mesomelas, on three legs and with the bill for the other to be settled, helped him.

It was very difficult, in the tropic dust, to follow what exactly happened next. For the next few minutes black-back was here, there, and everywhere, leaping and dodging in and out like a lambent flame. The human eye could scarcely follow him, but the human ear could hear plainly the nasty, dog-like snarling and the snap of teeth.

The side-stripe, as I have said, was the weightier beast, but the black-back never gave him the advantage, which he sought, of the close-fought fight.

More than once he was chased, but only to lead his foe into the open, where he could play his own game to his own liking; and at last, when the moon rose, and his mate had the female black-back driven back to her last ditch, so to speak, at the entrance to her lair, the side-stripped jackal, spouting blood at every joint, it seemed, collapsed suddenly, and apparently gave up the ghost.

Now, our black-backed jackal was not a young beast, and he was up to most wild-folks' games--which was as well. He approached the corpse with caution, and as he poised for the last spring the corpse was at his throat. Black-back, however, was not there, but his tail was, and the side-striped one got a mouthful of the bushy black tip of that. Whereupon Mesomelas recoiled on himself, and for a moment a horrible "worry" followed, at the end of which the other dropped limply again, this time, apparently, really done for.

Very, very gingerly the black-back--himself a red and weird sight in the eye of the moon--approached, and seized and shook the foe, dropped him, and--again that foe was a leaping streak at his throat.