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.