At that point the sheep-dealer spoke, just a little too late.

"Get out o' that!" he said, with a thrust of his staff at Jan.
And--"Come in here, Grip," he added to his own dog. But his orders came
too late.

For his part, Jan had lost blood and realized that he was attacked in
fierce earnest. As for Grip, he had tasted blood, and found it as balm
to his aching ribs. This big blundering black-and-gray thing was no
sheep, at all events. Then let it keep away from him, or take the
consequences. Life was no game for Grip; but rather a serious routine of
work, of fighting to kill, of getting food, of resting when he might,
and of avoiding his master's ashen staff. Nothing could be more
different from Jan's gaily irresponsible and joyously immature
conception of life.

However, Jan was in earnest now; more so than he had ever been since,
more than five months earlier, he had flung his gristly bulk upon the
vixen fox who slew his sister in the cave. Some breath he wasted in a
second cry--all challenge and fury, and no questioning wonder this
time--and then, like a Clydesdale colt attacking a leopard, he flung
himself upon the sheep-dog, roaring and grappling for a hold. It seemed
that Grip was made of steel springs and india-rubber. The shock of Jan's
assault was doubtless something of a blow; for Jan weighed more than the
sheep-dog; but he tossed it from him with a twist of his densely clad
shoulders, and again as the youngster blundered past him he took toll
(this time of the loose skin on the right side of the hound's neck) in
his precisely worked jaws.