The Way of the Wild

ere never going to flap. All black above, all white below, he was. The fact was worth noting, because, as seen from below, he looked neither

gale, one realized that here was one of Nature's masterpieces. He arrested the g

th eyes as cold as the waves whose glitter they reflected, and a heart as implacable as the storm that cherished it; sea-rover, pillager, pirate, swashbuckler, son of the storm in whose fierc

amped upon their whole body. But there was no expression in Cob. His cold eyes continued to stare with steady stoniness, his vast vans to waft an occasional shallow, lazy quarter-flap, his spotless head to peer down at times. Once only, as the real king of the birds, on his course, drew very near, so that you could hear

kly, gratingly, and tersely; and then, as if expec

fumble at his hip-pocket. But, save for that, he took no further notice, and beat on with his terrific, piston-like, regular wing-beats; and the gull, that speckl

y, and made straight for the eagle, barking hoarsely with rage as it came. Another hollow bark followed, and a second evil ebony form hurled down from the tottering cliff-top, and

but if they had been hobgoblins straight from an evil dream, they cou

said no more, but wheeled on

e shooting and diving, striking and flapping, about his regal head in a manner that even he could not pretend any longer to ignore. No one, not even a king of all the birds, feels comfortable under the imminent possibility of losing an eye-and such a haughty, wonderful eye, too. Nor did the eagle. And he showed it. One presumes h

ad anything to do with it-he could have squeezed the life out of them with one awful handshake, if his heart had been as big as his claws. But they had something to do with it. And they k

obably no one had seen them go except Cob, and Cob was by now a lonely, dwindling speck away over the restless ocean. Then he was not. He was coming back, swinging along with great

at stony stare of the sea-rover; and Cob, seeing where she had come from, surrendered himself to the gale, hurtled down-wind, veered, tacked, circled, rocking, and came down in a series of his o

lung them up, hat-fashion, fanning wide his tail, dropped his giant webbed feet, and came to anchor with a rush. Then he folded those wonderful pinions of his, foot by rustling foot, stared stoni

w-how-h

ce as well as his nest. The gray crows saw no cause for merriment, remembering how big the great gull was, and how small are these little, long-wooled, black-faced hill sheep. Moreover, sheep do not often obl

their own black gouge-beaks, hunched, cold, out-at-heels, and dejected. Then he

, he turned his head and looked-only looked-at a gray crow that had presumed, upon the turning of his broad, black back, to recommence feeding, and that hooded crow moved

at other times upon his tail; and, in case the others should find the woolly outside, where they alone could feed, too easy, he was continually breaking off, to rush-a red-headed demon from hell now-at the raven, or glare at the crows and remov

. As a matter of fact, friend raven was a better carver than the sea-pirate, had a beak better suited for the grisly purpose. Finally, the black one got hold of a piece of meat, and did not let go. He hung on, and, before anybody realized that he had moved, Cob's yellow-and-red-painted bill-nearly all

herring-gull to gobble up what he could in the confusion, and risk his life in the process, when suddenly, above the beating of

resent literally flung itself into the air, seemed really, though of course they were not, c

d his wonderful wings beat and beat tremendously, frenziedly, with a noise you could hear all up the hill; the

e rack of man's Inquisition of the wild. He had stepped upon it; it had gone off, and caught him by the right

n of going temporarily insane when they first find themselves trapped, because the trap represents to them the most supreme, the most unbearable, of all terrors

his beak open, his whole jet and spotless white body shaken and convulsed with pantings that were almost sob

eaward. The gray crows climbed the heavens to landward, like fl

st. His duty was to see that his eggs, their eggs, hatched out; and with him the motto was: "The end justifies the means." This bird, this sea-rover, this big pirate, alone stood between him and the

n to it that some teeth of that instrument of vile torture that had hold of him were broken off, and that his leg should have been caught in the gap thus formed. Moreover, the trap had not been looked aft

him, and perhaps taught him how much a leg can hurt when tugged by the full lift of six

s eyes, a strangely malignant, devilishly roguish leer, that belied his appearance. Perhaps he was waiting to see if Cob during his struggles obligingly touched off any f

ings, and clumsily half-hopped, half-heavily napped, down to Cob, lying there still and silent, but very much awake, upon the snow

pect from them. He only stared at him with one cold eye, a tense, lop-sided stare; and he mouth

n the raven sharpened the gouge thing which he called his beak-wheep-wheep-upon a stone, as birds

how much alive he was. But Cob did not move, beyo

n the ribs, so to speak. But Cob did nothing more t

ns, he let drive straight at Cob's clear, shining eye-the left one, with which Cob, with his head t

w, in that fiftieth of a second allowed, just when it seemed as if nothing could save his eye, Cob's head snicked round and up, and he slid the enemy's beak down off his own with as neat a parry as ever you saw. And he did more. He caught hold of the said raven's beak, got a grip on beak in beak, and on

y get any other bird than a gull to fight with him like it. It was not the raven's way of fighting, though, and I think he felt himself in a trap. He certainly acted like a bird out of its senses, while the gull, flapping hugely, and forgetting, in the excitement, his own bondage, gradually forced the raven's head back and back over his back, till that raven was in

as

abolical horror

e moment, and both literally sprang bodily up into the gale in on

hat nearly unhinged every bone in their bodies.

-at the same fraction of time, and both hurtled

een caught by the

really quite light hold, as we have alread

of the raven's tail-feathers, and left th

dissolving with every desperate, stampeding wing-beat into the hurrying cloud-wrack and the wild se

st, stolidly soaring over a small, flat island, golden with furze, purp

ch of black and white! It flashed to the eye of the raiding rogue-raven, and he altered course towards it, when it turned into a female g

treasure, and began yelling, "How-h

d empty of life, and

the raven in

he hen-raven at

d all the time the great black-backed g

s stroke, and-the hen-raven lunged. Nothing now, she knew, could save her eggs, unless she rose to fight the co

it was of jet-black, and it knocked the cock-raven one way, and sent the hen-raven, pickin

eams he could still feel that trap on his leg. Who knows? He certainly used to wake up wi