The moccason did not wait to parley with his enemy, but skulked away through the long grass, every now and then raising his head to glare behind him. But the peccary tracked him by the smell, and on coming up to him, uttered a shrill grunt. 'The snake, finding that he was overtaken, threw himself into a coil, and prepared to give battle; while his antagonist, now looking more like a great porcupine than a pig, drew back, as if to take the advantage of a run; and then halted. Both for a moment eyed each other—the peccary evidently calculating its distance—while the great snake seemed cowed and quivering with affright. Its appearance was entirely different from the bright semblance it had exhibited but a moment before when engaged with the birds. Its eyes were less fiery, and its whole body seemed more ashy and wrinkled. We had not many moments to observe it, for the peccary was now seen to rush forward, spring high into the air, and pounce down with all her feet held together upon the coils of the serpent! She immediately bounded back again; and, quick as thought, once more rose above her victim. The snake was now uncoiled, and writhing over the ground. Another rush from the peccary, another spring, and the sharp hoofs of the animal came down upon the neck of the serpent, crushing it upon the hard turf. The body of the reptile, distended to its full length, quivered for a moment, and then lay motionless along the grass. The victor uttered another sharp cry, that seemed intended as a call to her young ones, who, emerging from the weeds where they had concealed themselves, ran nimbly forward to the spot.'
While the father and son are watching the peccary peeling the serpent as adroitly as a fishmonger would skin an eel, another actor enters upon the scene. This was the dreaded cougar, an animal of the size of a calf, and with the head and general appearance of a cat. Creeping stealthily round his victim, who is busy feasting on the quarry, he at length attains the proper vantage-ground, and gathering himself up like a cat, springs with a terrific scream upon the back of the peccary, burying his claws in her neck, and clasping her all over in his fatal embrace. 'The frightened animal uttered a shrill cry, and struggled to free itself. Both rolled over the ground—the peccary all the while gnashing its jaws, and continuing to send forth its strange sharp cries, until the woods echoed again. Even the young ones ran around, mixing in the combat—now flung sprawling upon the earth, now springing up again, snapping their little jaws, and imitating the cry of their mother. The cougar alone fought in silence. Since the first wild scream not a sound had escaped him; but from that moment his claws never relaxed their hold, and we could see that with his teeth he was silently tearing the throat of his victim.'
The Robinsons of the desert were now in an awkward predicament; for although they had been safe from the peccary, the cougar could climb a tree like a squirrel. A noise, however, disturbs him from his meal, and swinging the dead animal on his back, he begins to skulk away. But he is interrupted before he can reach cover; and as the new-comers prove to be twenty or thirty peccaries, summoned to the field by the dying screams of their comrade, he has more to do than to think of his dinner. To fling down his burden, to leap upon the foremost of his enemies, is but the work of an instant; but the avengers crowd round him with their gnashing jaws and piercing cries, and the brute darts up the tree like a flash of red fire, and crouches not twenty feet above the heads of the horrified spectators! The father, however, after some agonising moments of deliberation, brings him down with his rifle; and the cougar, falling among the eager crowd below, is torn to pieces in a moment. But this does not get rid of the peccaries, who set up their fiendish screams anew as they discover two other victims in the tree. The father fires again and again, dropping his peccary each time, till five lie dead upon the ground; but the rage of the rest only becomes more and more furious—and the marksman is at his last bullet. Here we shall leave him; and such of our readers as may be interested in his fate—who form, we suspect, a very handsome percentage on the whole—may make inquiries for themselves at his Desert Home.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Or the Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness. By Captain Mayne Reid. London: Bogue. 1852.
[THE VATTEVILLE RUBY.]
The clock of the church of Besançon had struck nine, when a woman about fifty years of age, wrapped in a cotton shawl and carrying a small basket on her arm, knocked at the door of a house in the Rue St Vincent, which, however, at the period we refer to, bore the name of Rue de la Liberté. The door opened. 'It is you, Dame Margaret,' said the porter, with a very cross look. 'It is high time for you. All my lodgers have come home long since; you are always the last, and'——
'That is not my fault, I assure you, my dear M. Thiebaut,' said, the old woman in a deprecatory tone. 'My day's work is only just finished, and when work is to be done'——