For perhaps three or four long, intense minutes there was not a move made. Then the round eyes of the lynxes shifted ever so little, while the bear's eyes never faltered. The bear's was the steadier purpose, the more tenacious and resolute temper. Almost imperceptibly the lynxes shrank backward, gliding inch by inch. A swift side-glance showed them that the way of retreat was open. Then, as if both were propelled by the one vehement impulse, they bounded into the air, one whirling aside and the other almost doubling back upon his own trail. Quicker than it takes to tell it, they were fleeing like gray shadows, one over the bank and through the juniper bushes, the other up along the snowy shore of the pond, their discomfiture apparently driving them to part company. The bear, as if surprised, sat up on his haunches to stare after them. Then, with a hungry look at the beavers, now swimming openly far out in the moonlight, he turned and shambled off to find some more profitable hunting.
"ONCE MORE THE WATCHFUL SENTINEL APPEARED."
For a few minutes all was stillness, save for the rushing of the water over the dam. The solitude of the night had resumed its white and tranquil dominion as if nothing had ever occurred to jar its peace. Then once more the watchful sentinel appeared, sitting erect on the dam, and the diligent builders busied themselves to complete the mending of the breach.
The Terror of the Air
ROM all the lonely salt-flats and tide-washed, reedy shores of the wide estuary, the flocks of the sea-ducks had flown south. After feeding for days together amicably, golden-eyed and red-head, broad-bill and dipper, all hobnobbing and bobbing and guttering in company, without regard to difference of kin, they had at last assorted themselves into flocks of the like species and wing power, and gone off in strong-flying wedges to seek milder tides and softer skies.
Nevertheless, though the marshy levels were now stiffened with frost, and ice fringes lingered thin and brittle behind each retreating tide, and white flurries of snow went drifting over the vast, windy spaces of wave and plain, some bold, persistent waifs of life clung to these bleak solitudes. Here and there a straggler from the flocks, or a belated arrival from farther north, fed solitary and seemed sufficient to himself; while here and there a few hardy coots, revelling in the loneliness and in the forbidding harshness of the season, swam and dived among the low, leaden-coloured waves.