^6 ZOOLOGICAL SKETCHES. 



panthers crouching for a spring. Where the first move- 

 ment is sure to be a signal of attack, even great strate- 

 gists somehow prefer to let the enemy strike the first 

 blow and thus betray his tactics, — " forewarned, fore- 

 armed," — but circumstances are apt to disconcert such 

 plans. A thing not larger than a hazelnut, a pebble 

 thrown from the top of the rock, made the mastiff start 

 just for a moment, but in that moment the pack leaped 

 upon him with a simultaneous rush, and two seconds 

 after the sound of cracking bones announced the end 

 of the unequal struggle. They had borne him down 

 at the first onset, and when they finally ' dragged him 

 into the open gully I do not believe that there was an 

 unbroken joint in his body. Three of the big tramps 

 had done most of the killing, but now the whole pack 

 laid hold, and in less time than it takes me to write the 

 words they had torn him into pieces, not in the conven- 

 tional but in the literal sense of the word, — limb from 

 limb and rib from rib, — with a fury and a rage of de- 

 structiveness which plainly showed that hunger had 

 nothing to do with their motives. It was evidently an 

 act of revenge, provoked proximately by his uncer- 

 emonious intrusion, but chiefly, without doubt, by the 

 odium invidice, the pariah's deep-seated and long-cher- 

 ished hatred of the privileged caste whose representa- 

 tive had dared to beard them in their den. What right 

 had he to wax fat while they starved, — to fatten in the 

 service of the arch-usurper of all the good things of this 



