"Come on!" he shouted to the surprised and baffled enemy. "Come on now, and I'll wring your ugly neck!"
But the bird didn't wait to accept his polite invitation; and a moment later it was out of sight, and out of mind, and the children found they were again alone in the beautiful glade.
"I don't want to be a bird any more," said Dulcie when she had recovered her composure.
"No, it's too risky," admitted her brother. "When that big dark thing came in sight there was so little time to think what to do. That second, too," he added with a shudder, "when I thought the brute had got you, was too awful!"
She felt quite important now at having gone through such peril.
"I could never have imagined that birds had such a lot to put up with," mused Cyril as they walked on—"hunger and suffering, with the risk any moment of being gobbled up!"
"There ought to be some one to take care of the poor things," remarked Dulcie. "If it hadn't been for the catseyes we should have been eaten up and ended like that." She glanced at the bracelet on her wrist and added, with a timid look at her brother, "It seems safer as we are."
"Bosh!" he rejoined. "We want adventures. That's what we're going for—and freedom. We had a ripping time as larks—till the end. It certainly wasn't very comfortable then."