“What a strange-looking crow!” Number Three Giant was saying. “I never saw one with head and shoulders white. Arrah! it’s dead.”
Even in his dreams, the Pied Raven could not repress his indignation. To be mistaken for a crow, was more than he could bear.
“I saw it kick a little,” said Giant Number Two,—the one with the nose-horn.
“So?” The Pied Raven felt himself being lifted from the ground; but he was growing drowsier every moment and did not care much. Something pried his mouth open but that did not matter either. He was beyond feeling any interest in what happened to him.
“Choked by a big fish-bone!” cried a voice, and then a pair of fingers reached down his throat and pulled something loose that suddenly woke him up, it hurt so like fury.
“By my old white head!” squawked the Pied Raven; but, all the same, things stopped spinning around and he felt better. After a moment, he found himself flat on his back, staring at the sky and beginning to think it time to get up and go somewhere else.
“A man, a mammoth and a rhinoceros!” he said as the three giants assumed earthly shapes; and he scrambled to his feet, a Pied Raven once more, although a trifle the worse for wear. Giant Number Three now become a Trog-man,—a fairly young one—held the fish-bone between the first and second fingers of his right hand.
“Well for you we chanced to be passing this way,” he said and smiled again.
The Pied Raven jumped. Here was a Trog-man who could talk sense. All the rest of them he had seen, jabbered and made strange noises in their throats. This one could make his face all sunshine too. The Pied Raven thought him a pretty good sort.
“Well, indeed,” he rasped. “Trog-men usually throw stones at birds and never take fish-bones from their throats. I will do as well by you if I ever can.” He looked curiously at the group before him. “A man, a mammoth and a rhinoceros; queer combination, that. How did you three ever come to be together?”