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Mesomelas had hobbled out to view the "kill" for herself, and snarl her appreciation truly, it was a strange way of showing it with thin, wicked ears laid back, and more than wicked fangs bared, the waiting, watching shadows had crept forward a little, on their bellies, head up, and Mrs. Mesomelas, with the quick suspicion of motherhood awake in her, saw them.
Whereupon Mesomelas recoiled on himself, and for a moment a horrible "worry" followed, at the end of which the other dropped limply again, this time, apparently, really done for. Very, very gingerly the black-back himself a red and weird sight in the eye of the moon approached, and seized and shook the foe, dropped him, and again that foe was a leaping streak at his throat.
And the picture of that little black-backed fellow that Canis mesomelas, if you like official terms all alone there, and surrounded by a dozen deaths at least, and all nasty, doing the stalking act upon that python was great. He stalked. My! how he stalked!
He was not there when the enemy's teeth closed, but his fangs were, and fang closed on fang, and the resulting tussle was not pretty to behold. Mesomelas cleared himself from that scrunch with very red lips, but never stopped his whirling, light-cavalry form of attack.
Anyway, he attacked, sailing in with his dancy, chopping, in-and-out skirmishing methods; and Mrs. Mesomelas, on three legs and with the bill for the other to be settled, helped him. It was very difficult, in the tropic dust, to follow what exactly happened next. For the next few minutes black-back was here, there, and everywhere, leaping and dodging in and out like a lambent flame.
It scarcely seemed possible that the black-backed little chap had moved, but he had leaped in and out again, chopping wickedly with a sword-like gleam of fangs as he did so. The other pivoted, quick as thought, and counter-slashed, and, before you could wink, Mesomelas was in and away, in and out, once, twice, and again.
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.
Mesomelas side-stepped, and neatly chopped a terrible, wrenching bite at his hindleg in passing. It fetched him over, and he lay still, the moon shining on his side, doubly and redly striped now. This time it was Mesomelas who sprang at his throat to be met by fangs.
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.
Still, our Mesomelas was taking no chances, and he galloped home with his capture before he stopped, as proud and happy an old dog, rascally jackal as ever cracked a bone on a fine day. He was a little puffed, and more than a little puffed up, and it may have been that he did not keep his eyes all round his head, as a jackal should always do.
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