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.