Retribution was swift.  Gulo yelled aloud—­and he was a dumb beast, too, as a rule, but I guess the pain was excruciating—­as a hooked stiletto, it appeared, stabbed through fur, through skin, deep down through flesh, right into his back, clutching, gripping vise-like.  Another stiletto, hooked, too, worse than the first one, beat at his skull, tore at his scalp, madly tried to rip out his eyes.  Vast overshadowing pinions—­as if they were the wings of Azrael—­hammered in his face, smothering him, beating him down.

Ah, but I have seen some fights, yet never such a fight as that; and never again do I want to see such a fight as the one between Gulo and the golden eagle that made a mistake in his pride of power.

All the awful, cruel, diabolical, clever, devilish, and yet almost human fury that was in that old brute of a Gulo flamed out in him at that moment, and he fought as they fight who go down to hell.  It was frightful.  It was terrifying.  Heaven alone knows what the eagle thought he had got his claws into.  It was like taking hold of a flash of forked lightning by the point.  It was—­great!

Still, flight is flight, and lifting-power is lifting-power.  Gulo, even Gulo, could not get over that.  He could not stop those vast vans from flapping; and as they flapped they rose, the eagle rose, he—­though it was like the skinning of his back alive—­rose too, wriggling ignominiously, raging, foaming, snapping, kicking, but—­he rose.

Slowly, very slowly, the great bird lifted his terrible prey up and up—­ten, twenty, thirty, forty feet, but no higher.  That was the limit of his lift, the utmost of his strength; and at that height parallel with the ridge, he began to carry the wolverine along, the wolverine that was going mad with rage in his grasp.

It was a mistake, of course—­a mistake for the wolverine to be out on the open ridge in stark daylight; another mistake for the eagle, presuming on his fine, lustful pride of strength, to attack him.

And then suddenly Gulo got his chance.  It hit him bang in the face, nearly blinding him as it passed—­the tree-top.  Like lightning Gulo’s jaws clashed shut upon it, his claws gripped, and—­he thought his back was going to come off whole.  But he stuck it.  He was not called Gulo the Indomitable for nothing.  And the eagle stopped too.  He had to, for he would not let go; nor would Gulo.

An awful struggle followed, in the middle of which the pine-top broke, gave way, and, before either seemed to know quite what was happening, down they both came, crashing from branch to branch, to earth.

The fall broke the king of the birds’ hold, but not the fighting fury of the most hated of all the beasts.  He rose up, half-blind, almost senseless, but mad with rage beyond any conception of fury, did old Gulo, and he hurled himself upon that eagle.

What happened then no man can say.  There was just one furious mix-up of whirling, powdered snow, that hung in the air like a mist, out of which a great pinion, a clawing paw, a snapping beak, a flash of fangs, a skinny leg and clutching, talons, a circling bushy tail appeared and vanished in flashes, to the accompaniment of stupendous flappings and abominably wicked growls.