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By the gate, hugging his mantle close, the watchman walked; at times he stopped, attracted by a stir among the sleeping herds, or by a jackal's cry off on the mountain-side. The midnight was slow coming to him; but at last it came. His task was done; now for the dreamless sleep with which labor blesses its wearied children!
Now, as most of the animals were very thirsty, and in a great hurry to drink, they did not care to dispute the matter, but gabbled off the words without a second thought. Even the royal tiger, treating it as a jest, repeated the jackal's rhyme, in consequence of which the latter became quite cock-a-hoop, and really began to believe he was a personage of great importance.
Hamilcar remained for a long time apparently lost in deliberation; at last he said: "To-morrow you will present yourself at sunset behind the purple factories in Megara, and imitate a jackal's cry three times. If you do not see me, you will return to Carthage on the first day of every moon. Forget nothing! Love him! You may speak to him now about Hamilcar."
Men of all nations were there, Ligurians, Lusitanians, Balearians, Negroes, and fugitives from Rome. Beside the heavy Dorian dialect were audible the resonant Celtic syllables rattling like chariots of war, while Ionian terminations conflicted with consonants of the desert as harsh as the jackal's cry.
A smile passed over Cecil's face, amused despite the pain he suffered. "That is one of my 'sensational tricks, as M. de Chateauroy calls them. Poor Zackrist! Did you see his eyes?" "A jackal's eyes, yes!" said Cigarette, who, between her admiration for the action and her impatience at the waste of her good bread and wine, hardly knew whether to applaud or to deride him.
The pack grew to be famous, after a time, for its ravages and daring, and the distant sound of its awful howling would make the unfortunate inhabitants of the various places shrink and shiver with terror. It came to such a pass, after awhile, that a price was set upon each jackal's head, and a few of them were killed off, but only a few.
It should also be noted that the head of the figure in this famous graffito, is more like that of a jackal than that of an ass; and appears to have been a representation of the Egyptian god Anubis, who is so often to be seen upon relics of the past as a figure with a jackal's head, with human arms extended, and with human legs and feet, as in this drawing.
Living or dead, he faded out of our jackal's life forever. And when he turned, his wife was standing at the entrance to the "earth" alone. The other, the female side-striped jackal's form, could be dimly seen dissolving into the night on three legs. "Yaaa-ya-ya-ya!" howled Mesomelas. The sea-birds were very happy along that terrible breaker-hewn coast.
"Awake, awake!" said the farmer's wife; "I hear a strange noise; something calling, calling, calling!" The man rose, and went to the window. "I hear it also," he said; "surely some jackal's at the sheep. I will load my gun and go and see." "It sounds to me like the cry of no jackal," said the woman; and when he was gone she woke her daughter.
The gods and demons, the representatives of Anubis, with his black jackal's head and his long erect ears, seem to make signs to us with their long arms and long fingers: "No noise! Look, there are mummies here!" The wonderful preservation of all this, the vivid colours, the clearness of the outlines, begin to cause a kind of stupor and bewilderment.
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