Mercifully, the side-stripe seemed to attract the more attention, or shed the more blood, and while the aardwolf was sniffing at his hole—­not intending to do anything if the jackal had a snap left in him, which he had, for the aardwolf possessed the heart of a sheep, really—­the black-back managed to dash out and abscond to his hole with the hare.  When the aardwolf came back, and sniffed out what he had done, he said things.

Our jackal’s head appeared at his hole next dawn as a francolin began to call, and a gray lowrie—­a mere shadow up among the branches—­started to call out, “Go away! go away!” as if he were speaking to the retreating night.  A gay, orange-colored bat came and hung up above the jackal’s den—­well out of reach, of course—­and a ground-hornbill suddenly started his reverberating “Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!” and, behold—­’twas dawn!

The jackal scuttled down to the river to have a drink, which he got rather riskily among the horns of drinking, congregated hartebeests, impala, and other antelope, and returned with the leg-bone of a bush-buck, which had been slain the night before by a leopard, and he went to ground very quickly, for the great spotted cat could be heard, grunting wrath, at his heels.

Then the day strode up, and the light, creeping in, showed our jackal, curled up and fast asleep, in his lair, as far away as he could possibly get in the space—­two ant-bears’, or aardvarks’, holes run into one—­from his also curled-up wife.

Later—­for it was quite chilly—­he came out to sleep in the sun, under a bush, till the sun, in turn, half-baked him, and he retired again to the den.

The days were, as a rule, for the jackal, a succession of sleeping blanks, but at the end of this day it was the fate of a small python—­small for a python—­to hunt a pangolin—­who was as like a thin pineapple with a long tail, if you understand me, as it was like anything, or like a fir-cone many times enlarged, only it was an animal, and a weird one—­into that den of thieves.

Mrs. Mesomelas, she appeared to shoot straight from dreamless slumber on to the pangolin’s back in some wonderful way, and Mr. Mesomelas, he bounced from the arms of Morpheus into—­the jaws of the snake?  No, sirs; on to the nape of that snake’s neck, if snakes may be said to have napes to their necks.  But to get hold of the neck of a python is one thing, to keep there quite a different, and very risky, affair; and our jackal, who was no pup, knew that.  If that legless creation of the devil could only have got his tail round something, our jackal might have been turned into food for his food, so to speak.  Wherefore, possibly, he was frightened.  It was like taking hold of a live wire by the loose end.  Moreover, the space was confined, and there were the whelps and all, and I rather fancy black-back was more frightened to leave go and stay than he was to hold on and run.

Anyway, he held on and ran.