wings--he felt the draught of them--the dim outline, as it were, of a
ghost, of some great shape rising into the gloom, and as instantly
vanishing over the sea-"wall," and he was alone, _and_--there were now
three upright and faded reeds in the clump near which he had sat him
down by the water's edge to scratch, _not_ six. The Thing, the
portent, the apparition, or whatever you like to call it, had been the
_other_ three; yet you could have sworn to the six reeds before it
moved. And the worst of it was that he did not know from frogs and
fresh water what the Thing was. He had never glimpsed such a sudden
death before, and had no burning desire to do so again, for he was
shrewd enough to know that, but for that fling-back of his, the javelin
would have struck him, and struck him like a stuck pig, perhaps through
the skull! Oh, polecat! The bird was a bittern, relation of the
herons, only brown, and if not quite so long, made up for it in
strength and fiery, highly developed courage.
Caution is not the polecat's trump card, as it is the cat's, but if
ever he trod carefully, it was thence onwards, as he threaded the
dike-cut and pool-dotted gloom. He came upon a lone bull bellowing,
and gave him room. He came upon something unknown, but certainly not a
lone bull, bellowing too; it was the bittern, and he gave that plenty
of room. He came upon two moorhens, fighting as if to the death, but
_he_ was the death; and slew one of them from behind neatly, and had to
go back with it, past both bellowings, to a second burrow in the
sea-bank, where he put it; and later he came upon only seven great,
mangy, old, stump-tailed, scarred, horrible ghouls of shore rats, all
mobbing a wounded seagull--a herring-gull--with a broken wing.
The gull lived, but that was no fault of the polecat's, for she managed
to run off into the surrounding darkness what time he was dealing
warily but effectively with one of those yellow-toothed devils of
murderous rats--whose bite is poison--in what dear, kind-hearted people
might have said was a most praiseworthy rescue of the poor, dear,
beautiful bird. (The poor, dear, beautiful bird, be it whispered, had
herself swallowed a fat-cheeked and innocent-eyed baby rabbit whole
that very day, before she was wounded; but never mind.)
The polecat, after one wary sniff, did not seem to think the rat worthy
of a journey to the sea-bank and decent burial, and passed on, the
richer for a drink of rat's blood, perhaps, but very hungry. He came
upon a redshank's nest in a tuft of grass.
The redshank, who has much the cut of a snipe, plus red-orange legs,
must have heard or seen him coming in the new, thin moonlight, and told
all the marsh about it with a shrieking whistled, "Tyop! tyop!" But
the nest contained four eggs, which the polecat took in lieu of
anything bigger, carrying two--one journey for each--all the way to the
sea-bank, to yet another hole he had previously scraped, or found,
therein. One of the other two eggs he consumed himself, and was just
making off with number four, when something came galloping over the
marsh in the moonlight, splashing through the pools, and making, in
that silence, no end of a row for a wild creature.
The polecat stood quite still, with his long back arched, his sturdy,
short forepaws anchored tense, and his short, rounded ears alert, and
watched it come, not because he wanted to, but because there did not
happen to be any cover thereabouts, and to move might give him away.
When he saw that the beast was long and low, and short-legged and
flat-beaded, his long outer fur began to bristle. Those outlines were
the trade-marks of his own tribe--not his own species only--and were,
he knew, more likely to mean tough trouble than anything else. Then he
realized that the path of the new arrival would take it right towards
him, and that was bad, because to move now and get out of the way was
hopeless. Also, he could see the size of the beast now, and that was
worse than bad--some ten inches to a foot worse.
The beast held a wild-duckling in its jaws, and the little body, with
its stuck-out webbed feet, flapped and flopped dismally from side to
side, as the animal cantered along with a somewhat shuffling,
undulating gait. And then the polecat became transfixed. He had
recognized the new-comer. He knew the breed, and would have given a
lot not to have molested that redshank's abode and be found there.
The strange beast--palpably a large, sinuous, and wicked
proposition--came right up to the polecat, standing there rigid, erect,
motionless, and alone in the moonlight, with the fourth egg between his
paws, and then stopped dead, almost touching him. Apparently, it saw
him for the first time. Certainly it was not pleased; it said so under
its breath, in a low growl.
The polecat said nothing, perhaps because he had nothing to say.
The beast was an otter, and an old one. Also, it appeared to be
suffering from a "grouch."
The polecat felt uncomfortable. He was eyeing the other's throat, and
marking just the place where he meant to take hold, if things came to
the worst; but he knew all the time that the otter, although its eyes
had never been removed for a fraction of a second off his face, was
really watching the egg. The otter was a female; probably she had
young to feed; the presence of the duckling darkly hinted at it. If
so, so much the worse for the polecat.
Then the otter put down her duckling, and growled again; but the
polecat might have been carved in unbarked oak for all the sign of life
that he gave. Then--she sailed in.
It was really very neatly and prettily done, for, as an exponent of
lithesome agility, the otter is--when the pine-marten is not
by--certainly quite It. The polecat seemed to side-twist double,
making some sort of lightning-play with his long neck and body as she
came, and--he got his hold. Yes, he got his hold all right. The only
thing was to stay there; for, as he was a polecat and a member of the
great, the famous, weasel tribe, part of his fighting creed was to
_stay there_.
When, however, hounds fail to puncture an otter's hide, any beast might
be pardoned for losing its grip; but he did not. Between the tame
hounds' fangs and his smaller wild ones was some difference--about the
difference between our teeth and a savage's, multiplied once or twice;
and the old she-otter, who had felt hounds' teeth in her life, realized
the difference. Also, it hurt, and the polecat did not lose his hold.
Then, maddened, wild with rage, the rage of one who expects a walk-over
and receives a bad jolt instead, that old she-otter really got to work.
She recoiled like a coiled snake, and the polecat felt fire in one loin.
It looked like the contortions of one big, furry beast twisted with
cramp, by the moonlight. You could not possibly separate the
combatants, or tell that there were two. But the polecat only fought
because he dared not expose his flank with the foe facing him. Now,
however, as they both rolled he--
Hi! It was done in an instant. At a moment when the roll brought him
on top, and when the otter was shifting her own hold for another, and
more deadly, which might have "put him to sleep" forever, he
miraculously twisted and writhed, eel-fashion, and with one mighty
wrench--a good strip of his skin and fur had to go in that pull, but it
couldn't be helped--he had broken the other's hold, leapt clear of the
clinch, and was gone.
The otter was up before you could guess what had happened, and was
drumming away on his heels; but she soon pulled up, realizing that a
polecat may be slow in the books, but not so slow in real life, with
her to assist speed. Anyway, she seemed slower; and, in any case, she
could not hope to follow him in the intricacy of holes and cover he was
sure to take to, like a fish to water. Moreover, she was spitting up
blood, result of friend polecat's neat and natty strangle-hold on her
throat, and felt more in need of the egg--which she had won, at any
rate--than a wild-goose chase.
Like a thin, wavy line through the night, friend polecat betook himself
to the sea-bank, to a hole in the sea-bank, to the very depths of that
hole; and there, in the shape of two angrily smoldering, luminous orbs
shining steadily through the pit-like dark, he stayed. Most of the
time, I fancy, he used up in licking his wounds. They needed it, for,
though clean, the punctures from the otter's canines had gone deep, and
a red trail of drops marked the polecat's route to his lair--one of his
lairs.
Not, be it noted, that he was entirely ignored. Blood-trails are
always items of interest in the wild, especially in the dark hours
while man sleeps. Thus there once came to the mouth of the hole
scufflings, and the noise as of an eager, inquisitive crowd--rats, who
hoped for a chance to get their own back on a detested foe. But one
evil snarl from the wounded beast removed them, convinced that the time
was not yet.
Once, also, something sniffed out of the stilly night, and that was a
fox; but one snap from within, a perfectly abominable smell, and the
narrowness of the accommodation proved too much for brer fox, and he,
with an insolent cock of the brush, retired.
Then, too, there was a rabbit, not looking where he was going, who got
half-way down the burrow before he realized the awful truth, and went
out backwards, like a cat with a salmon-tin on its head.
But along towards dawn there came an altogether different sort of
sound, somehow--a sort of a little chuckling sound; and the polecat,
answering it, came out. He looked rather less awful now than when he
had gone in. A form was standing outside--a dark, low, long form, like
himself; and, like himself, you could easily become aware of it without
seeing it, even with your handkerchief to your nose.
It was his wife, smaller, but no less dangerous, than he. She was
carrying an old hen-redshank in her jaws, its long beak and one of its
wings clearly silhouetted against the moon. And apparently she would
be very pleased if her husband would come out of the hole and make room
for her to stuff the redshank into it.
Then, together, they moved at their indescribable, undulating
gait--they looked like a snake between them in the moonlight--along the
sea-bank, till they came, with caution and many clever tricks of
vanishing, in case anybody might be watching, to yet another burrow,
screened completely and very neatly guarded by the splayed leaves of a
bunch of frosted sea-holly.
Both beasts went into the burrow, at the end of which was a nest
containing live things, which squirmed and made little, tiny, infant
noises in the darkness. They were the polecats' children, four of
them, all quite young, and all very hungry and very lively indeed; and
they explained a good deal of the reason for the stores of food set by
in other burrows in the "sea-wall."
But they did not explain quite all, for, unless Mrs. Polecat liked her
dinner high--and there was nothing I could find in her methods to show
that she did--or unless Mr. Polecat had got a craze for collecting
specimens and eggs, or forgot where half of his trophies were hidden as
a natural habit of absent-mindedness, one cannot quite see the reason
for hiding so much so soon, before the young could feed upon the
"specimens."
However, I suppose the two beasts knew their own business best. The
old male polecat seemed to, anyway, for just as the first flicker of
dawn was paling the eastern sky he went off down to the mist-hidden
dike, and, in no more than ten short minutes, returned with an eel,
protesting violently in that horrible way eels have, which he promptly
proceeded to decapitate and eat.
The afternoon had still some little time to run, when the waving grass
down the side of the sea-bank and the half of a glimpse of dull tawny
gave away the male polecat leaving his "earth" for the war-path once
more. Was he ever anything else than on the war-path if he moved
abroad at all?
That, even from above, was, I swear, all the indication he gave of his
exit. Now, although it is a rule in the wild that self-advertisement
is most unhealthful, there may be times when a beast like the polecat
may not advertise itself enough. And this was one of those times.
Far overhead, circling grandly on effortless, still, great pinions,
swimming, one might say, in the dome of the sky, a big bird, known as a
buzzard, was staring downwards with the flashing, sheathed glance of
all birds of prey--and aviators--at the world below. She, too, had
young, and simply had to find a meal. The hour was late, and her
success _nil_. Perhaps that accounted for much. Perhaps, however, all
she saw was that half-glimpse of dull, tawny fur, which accounted for
still more; that is to say, she probably made a mistake.
Anyway, the polecat was suddenly aware of a sound like the swish of a
lady's skirt in the air above him, and of a dimming of the light. He
sprang forward first, and glanced up second--knowing the rules of the
wild. But he was too late, for instantly the long, hooked talons of
the bird came down through the grass, and gripped. It was an awful
handshake, for the bird was a buzzard, we said, who is a sort of
smaller and less kingly edition of the eagle, without the imperial
power.
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.
[Illustration: "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.
[Illustration: "That little black-backed fellow doing the stalking act
upon that python was great"]
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.