week all night, with two children and the
spartan soul of Nels the Great Dane dog; and I have seen and I have
heard the _process_ of the hyena's lure."

"That is what I want to hear about."

"You shall hear; but will you be good enough to remember, please, Nels
is no average dog. There is nothing better in lineage than his. Also,
he is a thoroughly trained hunting dog. My husband, the police
commissioner, has used him in hunting tigers and cheetahs, black
panthers and leopards of the long sort, the big black bears of Himalaya
and jungle pigs, which we call wild boars at Home. To different famous
hunting districts of the country he has taken Nels, on many
hunting-furloughs; and Nels' courage stands to him and to his friends,
the very last word in courage. I have often heard him say he does not
know a man with courage to equal that which has never once failed in
Nels."

"I should like to know that dog."

"You shall certainly meet him; and it may be you are the one to know
him. I am confident no one does, now."

"About the hyenas?"

"The hyena has three kinds of call. The most common is the bark of a
puppy. (If you ever hear it you will not wonder why mother dogs go out
to it, to their death.) Presently the bark breaks into a puppy's cry.
It whimpers, then it climbs up into heart-breaking desolation; the
wailing cry of a lost puppy. It snaps out in distraction futile little
yappings; then it whimpers again, like sobbing. So on for hours.

"The next most common is a laugh; a harsh, senseless laugh. The effect
is to terrorise, to paralyse its prey. It is wicked. It climbs up
into piercing, high, falsetto tones; all maniacal. . . . So insane
that though one knows perfectly well what it is, it chills one's blood.
This keeps on a long time, with variations. Every change seems worse
than the last. But sooner or later it brings one up standing with a
laugh impossible to describe, unless it is devilish--so clear, so keen,
so intelligent, so beyond expression malicious. Toward morning this
sometimes brings sweat. Oh, maybe not if one were alone; but with
Nels, watching Nels--indeed yes!

"The last and least often heard--I mean they do not do it every night,
sometimes not for several nights, sometimes they do all three in one
night--is the cry of a little native baby; the cry of a lost baby; the
cry of a deserted baby; the cry of a baby alone out in the jungle
shadows and frightened to death."

She sto