The female genet had gone out of the other end of the hole, like a cork out of a bottle, taking a scratch on the nose from the owl with her; but, finding nothing further happen, she now crept back and peered in.  What she discovered did not give her any comfort, for, although upon her back, it looked as if that she-owl had been specially designed to fight that way.  She had one fiend’s claw gripped well home on the male genet’s shoulder, and another doing its best to skin him alive; while her beak was hammering the gray top of his weasely-looking head.  True, the male genet’s fangs were buried up to the socket in the owl’s throat, but that was no proof that he had found either her windpipe or the equally useful jugular vein, and, if he did not pretty quick, it looked as if it would never matter, so far as he was concerned.

I like to think of what that little, long, crippled female genet did then, in that well-like blackness and that smelly heat, with the chance of retreat open to her, and no one to say her nay.  Without hesitation, she dropped to the ground beside the scuffle, and flung herself into it—­into the winnowing, slapping radius of big pinions, that beat and beat and beat, smothering all with feathers and dust.  One wing caught her squarely, and she fetched up against the wall, winded and dazed; but she was back again in a flash, dancing on her toes, and, suddenly flattening, shot in, level with the ground, like a snake.

She arrived.  She felt feathers against her nose—­she could not see.  The wings pounded her flatter.  She laid hold, biting in as deep and as far as she could get.

As a matter of fact, she had got the owl by the neck, but one would have thought she had turned on a young volcano by the confusion that followed.  Both genets shut their precious eyes, and hung on, while that owl beat herself round and round in one last wild flurry, coughing horribly and humanly the while, and cracking nuts.  Finally she collapsed as suddenly as a pricked bladder, and lay still—­a great, mixed-up feathery heap, limp and pathetic, with her vast flung-out wings.

The two genets backed away, glad enough to be done with such a fiery, feathered fury.  The male genet stumbled a little, and sat down.  He was nearly as red as the sun on a stormy dawn, but all the blood was not his.

They did not seem to trouble further about the great foe lying beside them.  Certainly she pervaded the air with a musty smell that was not attractive, or, at least, not attractive when fowls were by; and it was to the fowls they turned, the female first, the male later, after he had done some very necessary licking.

I fancy that, though dizzy, the male genet was rather proud of himself.  He had brought his lady-love to such a feast as she may have dreamed of, and she had saved his life.  That gave them a fellow-feeling that looked well for his prospects in love.  But I do not think he had quite realized how hungry that beautiful velvet-skinned damsel of his choice was till that minute, and then he was given no time to think about it.