Chapter 20

Putting personal appearance aside, however, this feathered one, who dared to shatter the slumber of the everlasting wilderness, seemed to be under the impression that he was of vast importance. Moreover, his business appeared to be pressing and urgent, so that he could neither brook delay nor take "No" for an answer. It was as though he was under a desperate need to take you somewhere or show you something, and YOU must follow him--_must_; there was nothing else for it.

But nobody cared. The zebra trooped off without turning their striped heads; the gazelle, weighted under his horns, and the gnu bull stalked away unattending; the lizards remained fixed in a permanent attitude of attention; and the snakes continued to stare at nothing. No one took the slightest notice.

Then came the reply.

It was as if a person or a thing, deep down in the bowels of the earth, hearing the bird, stirred in its sleep, and shouted up, "I come." And it came.

Heralded by a peculiar, quaint, little, chatty, sibilant, hissing, whistling chuckle, there emerged from a regular cave that he, or an ant-bear, or some other burrower had constructed under an ancient bush, a beast--a most remarkable beast.

It was long--about three feet. It was low; it was stumpy, clumpy, sturdy, bear-like, and altogether odd. It had no ears that any one could find, and it rattled the most murderous armament of claws that you ever guessed at. But that was not all; not by any means. It, or, rather, he, had really been colored grayish white in the first place; but Nature had thoughtlessly dropped him into a vat of black paint on his "tummy," flat, and left him there to swim about, so that by the time he got out he was one half, including chin, black, and the other and upper half, including top of head and back and top of tail, grayish white. And then, for a joke, it seemed, Nature had painted a white band round where black and grayish white met, a sort of water-line, so to speak, and let the poor little beggar go--go, mark you, into a wild where self-advertisement is something more than unhealthful for the smaller folks. Afterwards, however, Nature--who is all a woman--had repented, seemingly, and being unable to undo her own jest, had given to the little, slow, conspicuous beast, as compensation, a courage surpassing the courage of any other beast on earth. The result was rather curious--it was also the ratel, or honey-badger, who had nothing at all to do with rats, but everything to do with honey, and was self-evidently more than three-parts badger.

"Kru-tshee! Kru-tshee-chlk! Krue-tshee-chlk-chlk, whee-tshee-tse-tse, tse-i-who-o-o!" he whistled, and chuckled, and muttered, and fairly sang to himself as he came trotting along towards the cheeky little bird, like a dog that answers a whistle. His gait was all his own, as he, too, was all his own original self, being unlike anything else, although he bore the stamp of the badger people upon him.

With a calm, rolling trot, head down, tail up, back a fraction arched, with something like the slouch of his distant relation, the wolverine, he proceeded, preceded always by that dusky phantom bird that flitted and perched ahead of him, like a yellow-hammer down a country lane--calling, calling, calling. And he, lifting his odd, flat, "earless," sleek head to it, would whistle and chuckle in reply. They had, it seemed, arrived at a perfect understanding, these two, during the centuries. "Lead on, Macduff!" he seemed to say.

They passed antelopes anchored in the shade; hartebeest, impala, and roan after their kind. They heard the click of horn and the stamp of hoof, but troubled not. They passed the place where a leopard lay asleep up a tree, and saw a devil's whip of a ten-foot mamba snake--and the bite of that same is a sixty-second short cut to the grave--flee before them as if they, and not it, were death incarnate. Once a serval cat, all legs and ears and agility, stood in their path to listen to the funny chuckling, whistling noises, but fled when it saw the little, low ratel as if it had seen a ghost.

But always undeterred by anything in the way, engrossed utterly on the task in view, the dusky bird flew ahead, calling the ratel on with its harsh cry; and always the ratel, unhurried and cool, jogged along in its wake, answering, and whistling, and chuckling away to it, as if convulsed with inward merriment. Perhaps he was. It was a strange procession, anyway, and one you don't look for every day in the week, even in Africa, the land of mysteries and surprises.

Finally, the bird stopped; and the ratel looked, and saw that it was flitting round the base of a big mimosa. Enough! He hurried a little at last. Next moment he was nearly hidden under a continuous stream of earth and dust flying back from his amazing foreclaws, and a whirling, whirring vortex of perfectly demented bees, whose nest, that had been weeks in the building, was dissolving in seconds under the trowel-like scoopings of those fearful claws.

Honey! Honey! Honey!

That was it. That was the magic word the bird, who was a honey-guide by name, had shouted to the ratel, who was a honey-badger, you remember; and honey-bees they were that made the air delirious.

The bird, with the quick eye of a detective, had located the hole of the nest, but having no trowel, forthwith fetched the ratel, who had, and together they fed, the beast on honey, and the bird on the grubs in the combs.

And the bees? Oh, they don't count! At least, they might have been house-flies for all the notice the ratel took of them, save now and then to bunch a dozen or so off his cowled head carelessly. Yet they would probably have nearly killed _us_.

It was about this time that the bull-gnu appeared, tramping steadily towards them; a rugged, rough renegade of the wilderness; a ruffian kicked--or, rather, horned--out of some herd forever, and, for his sins, doomed always to face the risks of life alone, or in the companionship of other male outlaws of soured temper like himself--almost always male; the female wild seems guiltless of law-breaking, or is under a banner of protection if it is not. Such "rogues," as men call them, are not gentlemanly, as a rule. And, by the way, you know the gnu, of course, _alias_ wildebeest? The head of a very shaggy buffalo, the horsy mane, the delicate, strong, sloping antelope body, the long, mustang-like tail, and the strange, twisted, unconventional character, half-fierce, half-inquisitive.

He--that lonely one--was going to drink, and he may have been doing it early because he had only his two eyes and ears, and his one nose, to warn him of the dozen or two forms of death that awaited him at the drinking-place, instead of the eyes and ears and noses of all the herd.

The gnu saw neither honey-bird nor badger till he was within a yard of them. Then he stopped as instantly still as if he had been electrocuted.

The ratel, who had himself to feed, and a wounded wife and two young whom he would lead to that honey-feast anon, looked calmly over his shoulder at the form of the antelope towering above him. There was no sign of fear in his straight stare at the shaggy, ferocious-looking horned head. He had no business with it, and would thank it to mind its own affairs. And the honey-bird didn't care much, either, she having no young to feed, because, cuckoo-like, she left other birds--woodpeckers, for choice--to see to that.

Wherefore, for as long as a man would take to select a cigarette with care and light it, there was dead silence and stillness, broken only by the distant, deep "Hoo-hoo, hoo! hoo-hoo, hoo!" of a party of ground hornbills.

Then that devil of meddlesome curiosity which is the curse of the wildebeests fell upon that gnu, and sanity left him.

"Kwank!" neighed he. And again, "Kwank!"

Next instant he had spun, top-fashion, on all four feet at once, and jumped in the same manner, and was gone, whirling round them, with great shaggy head down, and in a halo of his own swishing tail, at the rate of knots.

It was nothing to be wondered at in that strange antelope that he should then sink from wild motion to absolute, fixed rigidity, broken only by the restless, horse-like swishing of the long tail, staring hard at the ratel.

Perhaps it was the bees that did it, or perhaps the ratel stood in the gnu's very own path, or in the way of his private dusting-hole. I know not; neither did the ratel--nor care much, for the matter of that. But when the gnu went off again, circling with hoarse snorts, and shying and swerving furiously and wonderfully at top speed, he sat up on his hindlegs, the better to get a view of the strange sight. Perhaps he thought a lion was lying somewhere near that he could not see from his lowly, natural position.

Again the gnu stopped as utterly instantly as if he had run into a brick wall, pawed, stamped, snorted, and went off once more into furiously insane caperings--a new set--all the time circling, with the little, black-and-gray, erect figure of the surprised ratel as a pivot.

And then, in a flash, before any one had a second's warning to grasp the truth or prepare, with head down, eyes burning in the down-dropped, shaggy head, and upcurved horn-points gleaming in the afternoon sun, he charged, hurling himself, a living, reckless, furious battering-ram, straight at the little ratel.

Did that ratel quit quick? Do ratels ever quit an unbeaten foe? I don't know. They may, once in the proverbial blue moon; but I haven't seen 'em. This one didn't. He seemed to know that it is held to be a sound military maxim to meet an attack by counter-attack, and he did, though he had only the fifth of a second to do it in. Ah, but it was good to see that odd little beast trotting out coolly, head low, tail high, singing his war-song as he rolled along to meet the charging foe so many, many times his own size.

Next moment there was a thud--somewhat as if some one had punched a pillow--and the ratel was flying through the air, high and fine, in a graceful and generous curve. A thorn-bush--what matter the precise name? there are so many in those parts, all execrable--acknowledged receipt of his carcass with a crash, and for a few seconds he hung, like a sack on a nail, spitted cleanly by at least one thorn, far thornier than anything we know here, before the thing gave way, and he fell, still limply, this way and that, hesitatingly, as it were, as each point lovingly sought to retain him, to a fork near the bottom, where he stayed.

At last he picked himself out of the fork, and--oh my!--with a whistling grunt of rage, coolly, calmly, clumsily if you like, but grandly all the same, trotted forth into the open to look for that bull-gnu again. And that, sirs, was the sort, of animal _he_ was.

The bull-gnu, however, who was not previously acquainted with small beasts that would face his charge--and an aerial journey, _and_ the thorns--and come back for more, had fetched a curve at full gallop, and loped off into the landscape. For the first time since the herds outlawed him, I fancy, he seemed to be quite pleased with himself, and soon, antelope-like, put the ratel from him placidly, and forgot. But he was reckoning without his host. If he had done with the ratel, the ratel had not done with him. No, by thunder--not by a good bit!

Finding no bull-gnu, the slow little black and grayish-white fighter from Fightersville returned at a walk, still whistling with rage, to the unearthed bees'-nest, which looked like a town after a bad air-raid. And the first thing he did was to patter almost on top of a cobra, a five-footer, who, having narrowly escaped death by the gnu's flying hoofs, was what one might call considerably "het" up, or "off the handle," so to say.

The servant of the Devil sat up, blew out its beastly hood, and shot forth a hiss that seemed to run all up and down one's spine, like lightning on an elm-tree.

The robber of honey sat up, said "Tchik!" and turned a somersault. What's that? Yes, somersault is right.

Followed instantly two thin jets of liquid, as much as anything I can think of like those lines called "trajectory curves" which ballisticians do so love to draw in books on rifle-shooting; only, these curved lines began at the hollow point of Mr. Cobra's poison-fangs, and were meant to end in Mr. Ratel's eyes. They didn't. Old man ratel, he was standing on his hind-legs, with his sturdy paws in front of his eyes--like a man who looks across a sunny land--and seemed just about to turn a somersault again. He changed his mind, though, when the poison, that would have blinded him for life--and that life wouldn't have been long in that wild _then_, I want to tell you--stopped, and he went in at that black-necked, legless, soulless servant of Satan, utterly and amazingly unafraid. It was fine.

Oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you that when Nature repented, and gave the ratel a courage surpassing the courage of any other beast on earth, she also gave him a skin tough as a pachyderm's, and loose, as if it were two sizes too large; and that is why that black-necked cobra died quite quickly, and the ratel didn't, even slowly. Even if the snake's fangs had got through, which was not in the least likely, that did not mean to say they would touch Mr. Ratel's person inside. This, by the way, may explain why being spitted on thorns, like a beetle on a pin, when the bull-gnu charged, did not seem to worry him much, either.

The moon was up when the wounded mother ratel, on guard at the mouth of her burrow, looked up sharply. A side-striped jackal, who kidded himself she had not seen him lying in wait to find out, when she went hunting, what she hid in that den, suddenly bolted with a yap; and a hyena, represented by two burning eyes, who appeared, by some magic of his own, to guess she was wounded, jumped up and made way for something that approached. It was her husband and the cobra, the latter trailing along limply behind, who came that way; and even the hyena had retired, with an audible sigh--at least, it wasn't a moan quite--when he claimed the path. After all, there is no sense, if you are the most cowardly beast for your power on earth, in getting up against the pluckiest thing in creation in full possession of life and liberty.

Later our ratel sallied forth to "face the world" again. His wife had recovered from her wounds--the result, these, of refusing to believe she was not so good as a twelve-foot python, and a bit better--sufficiently to walk slowly; but that was not enough to face that wild where die-quicks, from lions, down through leopards, hyenas, wild-dogs, jackals, and the rest, are forever hiding, on the lookout for unfortunate ones flying an S.O.S. signal. No, he must go and do the provisioning alone, and alone he went.

For a peaceful beast, one only too pleased to mind his own business and thank other folks to mind theirs, his subsequent doings were rather astonishing. This was because he cared for neither man nor beast nor devil, in the first place, and because the night produced all three, in the second.

He got man in the form of the smell of meat--well-seasoned meat, even for Africa!--what time he was testing a native village, by scent and on the downwind side of him--and that showed his pluck, my word!--for honey or fowl. He detected neither out of the few dozen unspeakable stenches, but struck meat, and following it up-wind, arrived at a piece--a good big piece--on the ground among grass.

A civet cat--who is more civet than cat, by the way--a small spotted genet--who looked like an exaggerated ferret in the uncertain gloom--and the inevitable black-backed jackal--who must not be confused with him of the side-stripes--faded out at his approach like steam in a dry atmosphere. He might have felt proud of this silent respect, if it were not a fact that these gentry, these village frontier haunters, scenting danger, thought it a fine "kink" to let the brave one test it first.

And he did.

To be exact, that ratel touched off the tooth-jawed trap that was the reason for that free meal of high and valuable meat in that place, and when he jumped he didn't get anywhere. Also, it hurt his leg abominably.

Then the others reincarnated themselves out of the shadows--especially the jackal, who shouted "Yaaaa-ya-ya-ya!" and called a friend--and waited for things to happen. They were confident things would happen, for Africa is not a good place wherein to get caught in a trap--_there is too much likelihood of being mistaken for the bait_!

But they might as well have seen a thunder "portent" captured by the tail as this ratel by the leg; for, instead of instantly and foolishly abandoning himself to the frenzy of unthinkable fear--the fear of being trapped is the greatest of all to a free, wild thing--as practically all others would have done, he said nothing at all; he failed to lose his head; and, to crown all, he instantly, coolly, slowly, viciously, and doggedly set himself to struggle, with a grim persistence that was amazing. And, moreover, from that instant he never left off.

A striped hyena, seemingly in lifelong terror of his own shadow, turned up by magic--or perhaps he heard the snap of the trap. Seven times he bolted, for no earthly reason that one could see, before finally gaining courage to snap at the ratel at the very end of his reach. It was the kind of snap that would take half a man's face away, and not nice to meet when you are trapped. The ratel, however, came calmly at the hyena, trap and all, and so nearly got his own trap-jaws locked home on the unclean one that the hyena was glad to go away.

In the end, thanks to the amazing toughness of his skin, and its looseness, the ratel managed to, as it were, slide the bone of his leg between the jaws of the trap, leaving the skin and fur in, and the rest was mainly determined tugging and strong fang-work.

Then he coolly ate the real bait, and--the onlookers remembered appointments elsewhere. None of them, it seemed, was tickled to meet the ratel when he had finished. He was sure to be crusty; and, anyway, he had bitterly disappointed them all--he had achieved the apparently impossible, and, worst part of the lot, was not dead.

Now, a ratel will do almost as much for honey as a bear for pork, a leopard for little "bow-wows," or a man for diamonds. This will explain why he was foolish enough to follow, some hours later, the trail of some natives who had been out collecting honey from a camp the day before; or perhaps he knew nothing about the honey till, not too scientifically, he got into the camp. Anyway, the honey was very good.

There are, however, from a wilding's point of view, camps and camps. Most of the inhabitants of the wild, including the lion, who are not born with a pluck considerably above proof, can discriminate the difference. The ratel either could not or would not.

Then the knowledge was driven home. Driven home in the shape of a big, loose-limbed, deep-jowled brute of a dog, as unlike the ordinary native curs as it well could be. It did not come silently, or suddenly, for it growled full warning in a terrible bass; but the ratel showed contempt, and teeth that glistened beautifully in the red light of the dying fire the sleeping sentry ought to have seen to, but had not. Moreover, it did not come alone, for the camp was a white hunter's camp. The dog gave a thunderous baying rally-call, and almost before that sentry had leapt to his feet, the ratel vanished tumultuously and suddenly from the public gaze, under a perfect cloud of dogs. He was, ere any one knew what the riot might be, literally smothered under dogs--dogs, too, most of 'em who held up the deadly leopard, and hounded the tyrannical lion, habitually and for a pastime, mark you.

Then his devil prompted one of the black sentries to rush up and fire his rifle. Probably he did not know what was under those dogs; certainly he thought it would keep there. In any case, he nearly killed a dog, and the cause of the trouble did not keep there. He came out, miraculously alive, still more miraculously cool and unhurried. He broke away from the dogs as if they were little puppies, and, still quite coolly and slowly, he charged that man.

The yell that followed could have been heard quite a long distance through the cloaked night. And, in truth, one cannot wonder, for you may take it from me that the jaws of a ratel fast home on the calf of your leg, as our ratel's jaws were on that native's leg, form something to remember in dreams.

But it was that very native who saved our ratel's life, all the same; for his gymnastic display during the few seconds that followed was so energetic that the pink pyjamas and a revolver, that represented the white hunter fresh from sleep, had no chance at all of doing any damage except to the dancing native--which they nearly did; and the dogs, once more piling themselves on to the ratel, broke his hold, and the whole fight rolled and raged away into the darkness and the thorn-scrub, out of sight.

Later, one by one, those dogs came back, dead-beat most of them, with tongues lolling and sides pumping. Some limped, and some turned away every few yards feverishly to lick a wound. All were blood-stained, but not a drop of it--not one drop--belonged to friend ratel. He, that superb warrior, was at that moment trotting along, quite unconcernedly, through the bush about a quarter of a mile away. There was blood upon him, too--not his, the dogs'--and no other mark; and though he was pretty sore and sick from internal bruising, his skin, his wonderful loose skin, was whole, and unpierced by a single fang. He had, however, the decency to go home and fling himself into a stupor-like sleep, just to prove that he was a real, live beast of this earth, and not merely a phantom from other worlds.

The next afternoon was closing in dull and cloudy, and there were signs of a dark and bad night to come--just the sort of day wild hunters come out early in. This was why the grunt sounded then that heralded the appearance of our ratel above-ground, and he himself appeared, emerging at his very own slow trot from his hole. For a moment he paused, looking round, with his funny, "earless," flat head in the air, as if he expected, or listened for, the honey-guide; but the honeyguide was half a mile away, leading some natives--who, by the way, were endeavoring to copy the crooning, whistling replies of a ratel--to honey.

No honey-guide? Then he must go and search for himself. And he did, returning, in fifty minutes, for his wife, who, now much recovered--as only a ratel can recover from the very jaws of death--followed him with her young to the hole he had torn in a rotten tree-trunk where the bees were nesting.

They had proceeded perhaps three hundred yards, when, turning a bush carelessly, as no other creature would dare to do, the ratel fell almost on to the back of the bull-gnu.

There is no need to be surprised that they should meet. The wild is not an aimless mix-up in that way. Each creature has its beat, temporarily or permanently, nor seeks to deviate. You may look for the same herd of antelope, feeding near the same place, about the same hour each day; the same lion stumping the same beat, as regular as a policeman, most nights; the same hyena uttering horrible nothings within hearing of the same hills, any time after the setting of each sun, just as surely as the same cock-robin asks you for crumbs, the same blackbird awakens you with inimitable fluting, and the same black cat seeks for both in the same vicinity each dusk.