"Go!" shouted Eustace after them. "Fly to the wilderness, Gypsies, renegades! We have no need of cowards!"
The gobbler, too, was filled with exasperation as he watched the spryness of the keet family.
"Confound it!" he muttered under his comb-appendage. "Why aren't our youngsters hatched and in traveling condition!"
Eustace did not hear. He heard and saw only the oncoming Monster, which had ravaged all the wheat save a last slender strip, and this it was in the act of devouring; and as if this slight morsel could not glut its hunger, it reached out voraciously into the barnyard. All fowldom seemed about to be destroyed.
"Now, Clarence!"
The rooster started forward, then hesitated.
"Then follow me!"
Disregarding the fear he could not subdue, Eustace flung himself desperately in front of the Thing, quacking:
"Halt! You shall not...."
And he aimed at it the fiercest bite of which he was capable.