proceeded, preceded always by that dusky phantom bird that flitted and
perched ahead of him, like a yellow-hammer down a country lane--calling,
calling, calling. And he, lifting his odd, flat, "earless," sleek head
to it, would whistle and chuckle in reply. They had, it seemed, arrived
at a perfect understanding, these two, during the centuries. "Lead on,
Macduff!" he seemed to say.

They passed antelopes anchored in the shade; hartebeest, impala, and roan
after their kind. They heard the click of horn and the stamp of hoof,
but troubled not. They passed the place where a leopard lay asleep up a
tree, and saw a devil's whip of a ten-foot mamba snake--and the bite of
that same is a sixty-second short cut to the grave--flee before them as
if they, and not it, were death incarnate. Once a serval cat, all legs
and ears and agility, stood in their path to listen to the funny
chuckling, whistling noises, but fled when it saw the little, low ratel
as if it had seen a ghost.

But always undeterred by anything in the way, engrossed utterly on the
task in view, the dusky bird flew ahead, calling the ratel on with its
harsh cry; and always the ratel, unhurried and cool, jogged along in its
wake, answering, and whistling, and chuckling away to it, as if convulsed
with inward merriment. Perhaps he was. It was a strange procession,
anyway, and one you don't look for every day in the week, even in Africa,
the land of mysteries and surprises.

Finally, the bird stopped; and the ratel looked, and saw that it was
flitting round the base of a big mimosa. Enough! He hurried a little at
last. Next moment he was nearly hidden under a continuous stream of
earth and dust flying back from his amazing foreclaws, and a whirling,
whirring vortex of perfectly demented bees, whose nest, that had been
weeks in the building, was dissolving in seconds under the trowel-like
scoopings of those fearful claws.

Honey! Honey! Honey!

That was it. That was the magic word the bird, who was a honey-guide by
name, had shouted to the ratel, who was a honey-badger, you remember; and
honey-bees they were that made the air delirious.

The bird, with the quick eye of a detective, had located the hole of the
nest, but having no trowel, forthwith fetched the ratel, who had, and
together they fed, the beast on honey, and the bird on the grubs in the
combs.

And the bees? Oh, they don't count! At least, they might have been
house-flies for all th