Again, and yet again, the eagle swooped, never coming quite within reach. Again and yet again the bear, boiling with embarrassed fury, whirled and struck, but in vain. He struck nothing more tangible than air. The sharp indignant yelps of the great bird flapping close above him were a defiance which he could not answer. He had the prize, but he could not enjoy it. For a few moments he hesitated. Then doggedly he crouched down, with his head partly shielded between his fore paws, and fell to eating hurriedly. Before he could fairly swallow one mouthful, the air again hissed ominously in his ears, and those clutching talons tore at his neck. With a roar of pain, and wrath, and discomfiture, he snatched the prey up in his jaws, and plunged into the thicket with his head well down between his legs. As he vanished the implacable talons struck once more, ripping red furrows in the black fur of his rump.
Smarting, and grumbling heavily, the bear lay down in the heart of the willow thicket, and finished devouring the great trout. Still yelping, the eagle circled above the thicket. Through the leafy branches he could see the black form of his adversary; but into the thicket he dared not swoop lest he should be caught at a disadvantage there. For a long time he circled, hoping that his enemy would come out and give him another opportunity of vengeance. Then, seeing that the bear lay motionless, apparently asleep, his rage wore itself out. Higher he whirled, and yet higher, while the wary beast in the thicket watched patiently for his going. Then suddenly he changed his course. With long, splendid sweep of wing he made off in direct flight, slanting swiftly upward toward the blue silence above the peak.
On the Night Trail
"THE SHREW-MOUSE ... DARTED OUT INTO THE LIGHT."
HE radiant, blue-white, midwinter moonlight, flooding the little open space of white in the blackness of the spruce forest, revealed the frozen fragments of a big lake trout scattered over the snow. They stood out sharply, so that no midnight forager of the wilds, prowling in the fringes of the shadow and peering forth in the watch for prey or foe, could by any possibility fail to sight them.
The stillness of the solitude was intense, breathless, as if sealed to perpetual silence by the bitter cold. At last, at one corner of the open, a spruce branch that leaned upon the snow stirred ever so slightly; and from its shelter a little gray-brown nose, surmounted by a pair of tiny eyes like black beads, anxiously surveyed the perilous space of illumination. For perhaps half a minute there was not another movement. Then the shrew-mouse, well aware that death might be watching him from under every tree, plucked up a desperate valour and darted out into the light. The goad of his winter hunger driving him, he seized the nearest bit of fish that was small enough for him to handle, and scurried back with it to his safe hole under a fir-root. It was brave adventure, and deserved its success.
For ten minutes more nothing happened to break the stillness. Then again the little shrew-mouse peered from the covert of his hanging branch. This time, however, he drew back instantly. He had caught sight of a pointed black head and snake-like neck stealthily reconnoitring from the opposite side of the open. A hungry mink was making ready to appropriate some of the fish; but since he knew that a forest glade, far from the water, was not a customary resort of fish, alive or frozen, he was inclined to be suspicious of some kind of trap or ambuscade. Instead of looking at the delicious morsels, there in plain, alluring view, he scanned piercingly the shadows and drooping branches which encircled the glade. Suddenly he seemed to detect something to his distaste. A red gleam of anger and ferocity flared into his eyes, and he sank back noiselessly into covert.