When the sorely wounded dingo, who had been flung aside as if he
were a rat, returned to the fray his eyes were like red coals, and
his heart was as full of deadly venom as a death-adder's fangs. His
neck was tolerably red, too; it was from there that his eyes drew
their bloody glare. He crawled round the far side of the boulder,
close to the ground, like a weasel, and, despairing of the
throat-hold, fastened his fangs into one of Finn's thighs, with a view
to ham-stringing, while the Wolfhound was occupied in feinting for a
plunge at Black-tip's bristling neck. It was the death-hold that
Finn aimed at, but the sudden grip of fire in his thigh was a
matter claiming instant attention; and it was then that the
Wolfhound achieved the amazing leap that made Warrigal swear by
traps and gins. He leaped straight up into the air, with the sorely
wounded cousin hanging to his thigh, and Black-tip snapping at his
near fore-leg, and in mid-air he twisted his whole great body so
that he descended to earth again in a coil, with his mighty jaws
closed in the throat of Black-tip's cousin. His fangs met, he gave
one terrible shake of his massive neck and head, and when the dingo
fell from his jaws this time, two clear yards away, its throat was
open to the night air, and it had entered upon the sleep from which
there is no awakening.
Finn was bleeding now from a dozen notable wounds, but it was not
in nature that Black-tip single-handed should overcome him, and
Black-tip knew it. The big dingo ceased now to think of killing,
and concentrated his flagging energies solely upon two points--
getting away alive and putting up a fight which should not disgrace
him in Warrigal's watchful eyes. He achieved his end, partly by
virtue of his own pluck and dexterity, and partly because his smell
reminded Finn of Warrigal, and so softened the killing lust in the
Wolfhound.
Finn could handle the one dingo with great ease, even wounded as he
was, and, because of that smell, he had no particular desire to
kill. Indeed, he rolled Black-tip over once, and could have torn
the throat from him, but caught him by the loose skin and coat
instead and flung him aside with a ferocious, growling snarl, in
the tail-end of which there was a note which said plainly, "Begone,
while you may!"
And Black-tip, with life before him and desire in his heart where
Warrigal was concerned, was exceedingly glad of the chance to bound
off into the scrub with a long, fierce snarl, which he hoped would
place him well in Warrigal's esteem, though he was perfectly aware
that it could not deceive Finn.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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