r from the very jaws of death--followed him with
her young to the hole he had torn in a rotten tree-trunk where the bees
were nesting.

They had proceeded perhaps three hundred yards, when, turning a bush
carelessly, as no other creature would dare to do, the ratel fell almost
on to the back of the bull-gnu.

There is no need to be surprised that they should meet. The wild is not
an aimless mix-up in that way. Each creature has its beat, temporarily
or permanently, nor seeks to deviate. You may look for the same herd of
antelope, feeding near the same place, about the same hour each day; the
same lion stumping the same beat, as regular as a policeman, most nights;
the same hyena uttering horrible nothings within hearing of the same
hills, any time after the setting of each sun, just as surely as the same
cock-robin asks you for crumbs, the same blackbird awakens you with
inimitable fluting, and the same black cat seeks for both in the same
vicinity each dusk.

The surprise was in what followed. Perhaps the bull-gnu kicked our ratel
badly as he lurched to his feet, jerked from half-sleep into violent
collision with he knew not what. Perhaps the ratel had a memory.
Perhaps the presence of his family weighed with him. Whatever the cause,
the result was decided enough. He reared and hit deep, and fixed home a
very living vise, where he bit.

Then things happened, but that which immediately followed was not a
fight; it was not even a spar. The ratel never moved, although he was
moved--astoundingly. The gnu bull did the moving, and produced the most
amazing bit of violent activity one could dream of. It was quite
indescribable. A buck-jumping mustang of the most hustling kind would
have been as a gentle lamb to it. The ground all about looked as if
herds had jumped upon it--bushes, grass, flowers, and all were trampled
down flat. But it did not do what it was designed to do--it did not
break the ratel's hold. Bruised, assuredly, shaken so that he ought to
have fallen to hits, dizzy and blind, he did not let go, and in the
position he held he could not be hammered off. He just glued where he
was, saying nothing at all, till the end--till that grand old bull sank
and was still, exhausted, by loss of blood, and with one great hopeless
sigh his life departed from him, and he died.

The ratel did not leave go for some little time. He seemed to suspect
that the gnu bull was bluffing, or perhaps he was himself h