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 gra.s.s, 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 p.r.i.c.king 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "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 carca.s.ses 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 un.o.btrusive 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 gra.s.s, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "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 c.o.c.ked 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 n.o.body 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 gra.s.s, 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 sc.r.a.p 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 s.n.a.t.c.h-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 gra.s.s 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-cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed--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.