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.
The surprise was in what followed. Perhaps the bull-gnu kicked our ratel
badly as he lurched to his feet, jerked from half-sleep into violent
collision with he knew not what. Perhaps the ratel had a memory.
Perhaps the presence of his family weighed with him. Whatever the cause,
the result was decided enough. He reared and hit deep, and fixed home a
very living vise, where he bit.
Then things happened, but that which immediately followed was not a
fight; it was not even a spar. The ratel never moved, although he was
moved--astoundingly. The gnu bull did the moving, and produced the most
amazing bit of violent activity one could dream of. It was quite
indescribable. A buck-jumping mustang of the most hustling kind would
have been as a gentle lamb to it. The ground all about looked as if
herds had jumped upon it--bushes, grass, flowers, and all were trampled
down flat. But it did not do what it was designed to do--it did not
break the ratel's hold. Bruised, assuredly, shaken so that he ought to
have fallen to hits, dizzy and blind, he did not let go, and in the
position he held he could not be hammered off. He just glued where he
was, saying nothing at all, till the end--till that grand old bull sank
and was still, exhausted, by loss of blood, and with one great hopeless
sigh his life departed from him, and he died.
The ratel did not leave go for some little time. He seemed to suspect
that the gnu bull was bluffing, or perhaps he was himself half-stunned.
It was the sudden and peculiar growling hiss from his wife--sounding all
a-magnified in that wilderness silence after the battle--that made him
look up, at her first, and then almost instantly at _something else_.
His wife was backing slowly towards the "bush," every hair on her body
sticking straight out at right angles, her eyes fixed strangely upon that
something else. His young had taken to cover, not, it seemed, too
readily, but by their parent's order.
A lion was standing, still as a carved beast, at the far end of that
little clearing--_he_ was the something else. Goodness and his kingly
self alone knew how long he had been there, that great, heavy-jowled,
deep-bellied, haughty-eyed brute. He may have been present from the
first, or the middle, or only at that moment. Being a lion, he was just
there, suddenly, without any visible effect of having got there, a
presence of dread, created apparently out of thin air at the moment, in
that spot, and with less sound than a blown leaf.
This power of being, without seeming to come, of evolving from nowhere,
is one of the lion's most highly perfected tricks; for King Leo believes
in all the ritual of his craft, and is great on effects, even down to the
minor details. Power, grim and terrible, he has, without shadow of
doubt; but he never forgets to impress that fact--and more--upon the
world, and every action is carefully studied to advertise, not himself,
but his "frightfulness." A very fine play-actor is the king of all the
beasts.
But the ratel did not move. He had met his Napoleon, and was not--so far
as the watcher could see--afraid.
Motionless, scowling, with head down, and shrewd, proud eyes smoldering,
the lion stood there like an apparition of doom. He was, I fully
suspect, letting the effect sink in deliberately. He knew his game.
Also, he had a reason. Surely a great poker-player was lost in the lion.
But the little ratel met that regal stare squarely and unmoved. He whose
proud boast it was that he feared nothing that walked or crawled, or swam
or flew, could not be frightened now. And he who came to terrify was
perhaps all but ten feet long, and he whom he sought to terrify was
barely three feet. It was a comparison to make you gasp.
Now, that lion did not want the ratel at all, or his wife, or his family,
or anything that was his. He wanted the gnu, and would be very pleased
if the ratel would go away and leave it to him.
The ratel, moreover, did not want the gnu, being an eater of honey,
locusts, and generally badger-like fare for the most part; and if the
lion had only had the sense to wait a few minutes longer behind the
scenes, the ratel would have gone away and left the gnu. But he would
not be driven; _that_ was the rub. Attacking nobody unprovoked, he was a
grim beast to attack, and gave way before none. Hence the trouble.
Finding that the bluff of the impressive tableau did not work, the lion
tried a fresh one. Still staring at the ratel, he sank his head to the
ground, so that his great mane hung to the earth all about him. His
forelegs and his shoulders crouched, but his hindlegs and his back were
held at their highest, and his tail began to lash behind. Then he began
to growl tremendously and nerve-shatteringly, and as he did so he curled
his upper lips up and back, till the whole ghastly array of his teeth was
laid bare to view. In this position he looked like a gigantic grinning
mask, with blind eye-sockets where the wrinkles were on the sloping
forehead, his eyes nearly invisible below, and a tail lashing far up
atop. It was a horrible sight, and one calculated to stampede the
pluckiest animal.
It was, of course, also a deliberate piece of mesmeric bluff, the reason
for which was not made clear till one noticed, what the ratel probably
could not, that the great leonine tusks, the terrible fangs, were yellow
and worn, as were the rest of the teeth. This was an old lion, a king on
a throne already tottering, a monarch of yesterday.
That lion, however, might have turned into Satan himself, for all the
ratel cared. He was threatened, attacked, bullied, forced. His blood
was up, and had not all who ever fought him allowed that he was the
pluckiest beast on earth? Enough! Come lion! come devil! he would give
ground to none.
[Illustration: "All allowed that he was the pluckiest beast on earth"]
Lions are not too patient. Also, they have fine spirit of their own.
They are among the very few beasts who will hunt and attack animals as
strong as, or stronger than, themselves. And this lion's patience
snapped suddenly. All at once he seemed to remember that he was still a
king, though a king already within the shadow of abdication. The
terrible bass rumble of his growl grew, and changed tone; his tail lashed
faster and faster; and then, all suddenly heralded by a couple of wicked,
rasping, coughing grunts, he--charged.
The ratel moved to meet him--to meet him--and at a cool jog-trot!
What happened then was hard to follow. It looked as if the worn fangs of
the lion failed to make his hold on the wonderful, leathern, loose armor
of the little honey-badger, and that he bungled the stroke of his
terrible paw. Be that as it may, the honey-badger certainly went
straight in, right under the lion's guard, right under the lion, and
rearing, he bit home, and hung like a living spanner.
And here, perhaps, it is best to draw a curtain. For one reason, I
cannot describe it, and frankly confess the fact. For several other
reasons, it is best not to try. The ratel died in about ten minutes,
crushed, battered, smashed to death; but the chaos lasted longer than
that, because, even after death, he was not done with--the passing of
life had locked his amazing jaws shut forever, and _they were shut on the
lion_.
The end found the little ratel lying crumpled up and crimson on the
trampled grass, and the lion running about like some great injured dog,
squatting down every few seconds to lick furiously at his wound. Fear
was in the eyes of the king of beasts, for the first, probably, and
certainly for the last, time in his life, and his blood reddened the
grass wherever he made his way; but the internal hemorrhage was the worst.
Then the vultures came, and that, my friends, is a signal for us humans
to go. The vultures get the last word always, even in a story, and the
name of that word is--FINIS.
XVIII
THE DAY
Now, if you wore a helmet and neck armor of purple, green, and blue in
metallic reflections, with scarlet cheek and eye pieces, if your
uniform were of purple, brown, yellow, orange-red, green, and black,
"either positive or reflected," with a long, rakish, dashing
rapier-scabbard cocked jauntily out behind, wouldn't _you_ feel proud?
So did he; pride and the "grand air" were written all over him. True,
though, the rapier-scabbard was not a rapier-scabbard exactly--only a
tail; but it looked like one, in a way. His full title was _Phasianus
colchicus_, but ordinary people called him just plain pheasant for
short.
You would have thought, after all this, that even in the first pale
light of a cold dawn he would have been easy to see. As a matter of
fact, Gaiters, the head gamekeeper, one of his underlings, three dogs,
and a gun passed right under his bed without seeing him. Rather, they
may have unconsciously seen him, and put him down as a bundle of dead
twigs and leaves caught up in a branch. This is not very
complimentary, perhaps, to a gentleman attired in a gorgeous uniform as
heretofore set out, but true; and lucky for him, too, to have at once a
uniform of unquestioned splendor and one which would melt into its
surroundings.
They, the men, did not see him; but he, the old cock-pheasant, saw them
right enough. He opened one eye, and stared at them through that.
Then he opened the other eye, and stared at them through that. Neither
stare seemed to please him.
It was not Gaiters's way to march through the wood at that hour in the
morning. What meant this unseemly disturbance of _Phasianus's_ domain?
His suspicions, never long at rest, woke up. Moreover, somewhere at
the back of his brain rose a memory, a little, tiny speck of a memory,
which grew.
Then he stood right up.
Everywhere, here and there, in the gray cloak of the dawn-mist, he
could hear the sharp "Chawk-chawk!" and the quick, flustered whir as
pheasant after pheasant came down from its roosting-perch to clean and
breakfast. But his suspicions held him for a few minutes longer,
stretching his neck and peering about at the still-shrouded mystery of
the ground below; and it was as well, perhaps.
Suddenly his head was still; a spray of a brier-bush was swaying
gently. There was nothing in that, of course, if there had been any
breath of wind to move it; but there wasn't. Wherefore our gallant
friend did not come down to preen and breakfast like the rest, but sat
motionless as a statue, while the sun rose and touched him to a winking
golden and bronze wonder, and the mists began to be torn asunder. He
wanted to know what moved that brier-branch, and he wasn't taking
chances till he did.
Day came on apace, and all the night hunters who had remained so late
had already hurried off to bed save one. _He_ appeared, evidently
empty, certainly very angry indeed at having waited for a cock-pheasant
who refused to do what he was supposed to do and come down to
breakfast. Out of the brier-bush he came, a lean dog-fox, snarling
horribly up at the pheasant, who calmly returned the gaze, conscious of
his safety, of course, and said "Chuck it!" in a loud, harsh voice, and
quite distinctly, twice.
The fox, knowing it was no good to wait any longer in the daylight,
went, like a floating red shadow. The pheasant watched him go, but did
not move for some time. Foxes had been known to come back again more
suddenly than they went.
At last he flew to the earth, but even then he did so as silently as
his noisy wings would let him; and he did not announce the fact with a
half-crow, as the others had done. Very circumspectly he slipped off
through the undergrowth, by a series of little crouching runs, stopping
every now and then to freeze and listen.
Soon he came to one of those open, beautiful, grass-covered "rides"
with which keepers intersect pheasant-coverts. He stopped dead on the
edge of it, himself invisible among the drooping, leaning, old-gold
bracken. The "ride" was full of wood-people, for here had been
scattered that corn which Gaiters intended the pheasants to feed upon.
Indeed, there were about ten pheasants, hens and young cocks of the
year, doing exactly what they were intended to do. Also, there were
some half-dozen softly-tinged, blue-gray wood-pigeons, and one cheeky
jay--whose wing-patches rivaled the perfection of the blue sky
above--doing their best in a quiet sort of way to help the pheasants,
which they were not intended to do, by any manner of means.
The old cock-pheasant slid across the "ride" after a bit, low as a
crouching rat. He had no business there this day. His mind was still
alert with suspicion. Moreover, his father had been a cunning old cock
who had managed, by ways that were dark, to keep out of the game-bag
for years, too. The taint, as Gaiters would have called it, had been
passed on to him.
He made for the open edge of the covert, and he was mighty careful
about doing that even. He felt that air and plenty of horizon were
necessary to his well-being, after the disturbing vision of Gaiters and
Co., so unnaturally busy, hurrying through the dawn.
Now, it is quite remarkable how much you can see from the edge of a
pheasant-covert without being seen yourself. Keepers know that, but do
not give the fact away. The ground sloped away in two open grass
fields, a hedge dividing them, and it was within about the longitude
and the latitude of where that hedge met the covert that our old friend
maneuvered.
The climate about there seemed to suit him admirably. True, good food
was not strewn in plenty just where he could most easily see it. He
had to look for his acorns or his beechmast by the good old
domestic-fowl plan of scratching among the leaves; roots also he was
forced to scratch for; and the noisy mistle-thrushes with the tempers
of Eblis had to be driven off the berries he would look after in the
ditch.
Also, there was a stoat. That stoat, however, tackled him just once.
In the process it discovered (_a_) that he wore spurs not meant to be
ornaments, and (_b_) that no one could teach him much about using those
same spurs. The stoat, plus a new carmine decoration for gallantry,
remembered an urgent appointment down a rat-hole, and kept it. Perhaps
it was a young stoat, and had not learnt that there are at least four
degrees of cock-pheasant, namely, young and brainless, adult and brave,
old and brave and cunning, and old and decrepit; but the last stage is
a rare bird. There is nothing of any use to the stoat in the second
and third degrees of cock-pheasant--no health to the stoat, you
understand.
The dawning of the morning had passed by now in gold and crimson and
purple splendor; the mist-curtain had been drawn back by the fingers of
the wind, the utter darkness upon everything at ground-level had begun
to give way before the sun, and to leeward of most trees and bushes
there was a balmy luxuriance of golden light that held one lingering.
Gnats were dancing under the low-hung boughs in still corners, as they
will dance on the coldest day; song-thrushes were beginning to take
life for one more day, and tack hither and yon, as if they were busy
pegging the field down with an invisible "cats' cradle"; and the black
rooks, shining like burnished steel shields, flashed and flashed again
as they began to gather beneath the trees, where the ground thawed most
and first. Though they alone seemed to have discovered it, the pigeons
very quickly found that the rooks had hit something good, and you can
bet one jay, at any rate, must be there, to make profit out of somebody.
It was the jester of a jay, whom, in spite of his painted plumage, no
one seemed to have noticed, that first gave the alarm that carried the
cock-pheasant's suspicious temperament a step farther upon the path of
independent action. Up till then you will note that, though he had
left the vicinity of his own people, he had not yet left the realm that
was peculiarly their own--the woods.
"W-a--r-k, w-a-a-r-k!" gasped out the jay suddenly, and fled, a
half-seen vision of pinkish, of black and white, upon uncertain, almost
fluttering, wings.
It was like striking a gong. Instantly all motion was suspended, and
dotted thrushes, clustered rooks, and deprecating pigeons remained at
rigid attention. The old cock-pheasant, too, erect as an armored
warrior, unseen just within the covert, stood promptly at gaze.
Then, in no more time than one would take to inhale one puff from a
cigarette, the fields were empty--stark, cold, and deserted in the eye
of the morning sun. The birds had not so much gone, exactly, as simply
faded out--dissolved, as a picture may at a cinema-show. The
cock-pheasant did not go. He was in cover, and had a good view, a
strategic position of some moment.