ll-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.

The dark over his head burst like a mine, and feathers and noise
enveloped him whirling. That represented the female genet coming down,
fixed to the throat of a hapless fowl. She sucked the blood, and flew at
another. Ordinarily she would have removed that one and found it enough;
but men who have been "br