His efforts were crowned with success; he came upon a weird, earth-like little animal which sat digging at a hole. He should have sprung upon it at once, but he hesitated. Then the earthy one started up and ran off, disappearing with a final hop into an adjacent bush.
In the bush sat a young starling with broken wing, enjoying the view, and under the impression that it had reached safety at last.
Not many days before it had slipped out of its nest; the down of childhood still lingered on its body. What a long, long time it had already lived, thought the little fellow!
How it had wonderingly stared out of the nest, peeping through the branches after its mother as she flew away in search of food!...
With what a shiver of dread it had, one fine morning for the first time in its life, set foot upon the ground!... There was something about the ground which frightened it dreadfully; true, the earth could not run and jump, but nevertheless the little bird didn’t feel at all safe there. It longed to go aloft—aloft and flying!
The first minor difficulties were soon overcome. It learnt to glide through the air from branch to branch. Then suddenly it found itself really flying, able to turn and twist and sweep round in curves, to swerve upwards in spirals and suddenly turn and corkscrew down again. It had become master of its destiny—the world was big and the earth beautiful, for real life had begun.
Then one day it had flown into the farmer’s kitchen garden, which twinkled with flowers glowed with fruit; red and tempting they lay upon the ground, for it was strawberry season. There came a shot!
Something queer happened: all at once, after a loud noise, it found itself unable to rise and fly aloft; it could only hop clumsily in the air.
It ran and ran, tearing away in the direction of the long-drawn whistle of terror which the other birds uttered as they flew away. Now it sat quite still under the bush, awaiting the inevitable doom which comes to every crippled bird.
For days it had hopped about, getting farther and farther out into the field....