combative anhinga lit on the end of the cypress limb, stabbed at him with straight, sharp, javelin-like beak, and departed only when the ibis's neck suddenly lengthened and his stout bill lunged viciously at the intruder. Through lids that seemed to be tightly closed he saw a copper-backed red-bellied snake draw its glittering length out of the water and glide silently along a half-submerged log sixty feet below him; and once, when he appeared to be sunk in slumber, he caught the faint sucking noise made by a prowling raccoon as it drew its foot out of the soft clinging mud on the margin of the lagoon. But no sound came to him from the narrow willow-covered peninsula where Red Cam crawled slowly and laboriously through the muck, drawing nearer and nearer inch by inch, black Brutus crawling at his heels; and except when the light breeze stirred them, not a reed or a willow branch moved.
A half-hour passed. . . . A thunderous crashing roar shook the air of the egret city. Up from the trees on every side rose the startled egrets and herons in white and blue-gray clouds, croaking loud cries of alarm; and down from his perch on the cypress limb pitched Sanute the ibis, one great wing beating frantically—straight down into the waters of the lagoon close to the foot of the dead cypress.
John Marston, now standing tiptoe on his stump some seventy yards away on the other shore, saw
