Be that as it may, the male vanished suddenly and without explanation, doubling on his trail and going out like a snuffed candle.  He was in view, as a matter of fact, several times during the next few minutes, climbing quietly; but the dark blotches of the leaf-shadows magicked him into invisibility, and no one could tell where he was, till suddenly the silence was smitten by one piercing squawk somewhere among the greenery above.  Then a crash, wild flutterings, a hectic commotion, and he and a terrified guinea-fowl came down together, more nearly falling than he liked.  Indeed, he must have let it fall, or gone himself with it, as he slid past, grabbing for holds, if she had not dropped quickly to the next bough and taken a hold, too.  Then, side by side, they hauled the warm, feathery, fluttering thing up, and he slew swiftly, in order to silence the noisy prey, who foolishly kicked up such a noise, as if maliciously; for he knew—­and perhaps the gleany (guinea-fowl) did, too—­how quickly a crowd may gather to interfere in an advertised “killing” in that wild.

The female genet, however, was past caring about risks.  She had reached a stage of hunger when no risks can overshadow the risk of starvation, and she had the guinea-fowl by the throat, and was sucking its blood before the other had time to realize what she was at.  Then, with fine discrimination, she ate the breast and thigh, and later might, or might not, have let him have a look in, if some blotched shape had not slid up, without sound, across the blue black night sky, and, halting in the tree, begun, apparently, to crack nuts very sharply and very quickly.  Whereupon, without saying anything, the genets faded out.

It was nothing much, really—­only the noise she makes when the giant eagle-owl is angry; but when you are a genet, with a body under two feet long, you may find it rather a bore, if nothing else, to remain cheek by jowl with an angry eagle-owl three feet or so across the wings, with the feline temper of an owl, and armed, owl-like, to the teeth, if I may so put it.

[Illustration:  “An angry eagle-owl”]

Now the question came as the two genets arrived at the ground—­would she follow him, or would he have to follow her?  He was determined, anyway, that nothing short of calamity should part them.  Yet I don’t see, since he never uttered a sound, how she understood him to say that if she would follow him he would find her food, even though she was still hungry, for she had not yet got to trusting him much more than she trusted any other beast, and seemed to think that he was half as likely to eat her as to get her something to eat.  Such a thing as another creature finding her food for only just friendliness—­love was out of the question yet, or out of her question—­was an idea her suspicious nature could not yet grasp.  However, she followed.