there was no time to change his position before taking flight, or else the stiff, dense stems, hedging him in on every side, governed the direction of his take-off. At any rate, when he flapped upward above the reed-tops with a hoarse, long-drawn croak of panic, the first hurried strokes of his pinions placed him squarely in the plunging eagle's path.
For a hundredth of a second his ash-blue bulk, the wings spread wide, the long neck stretched to its utmost extent, loomed almost directly over the swimming shoveller and not more than fifteen feet above him. Next moment the eagle, hurtling downward at cannon ball speed, crashed full into the heron.
The great, loosely-knit bird crumpled, collapsed—a broken, shapeless mass of blood-spattered, ashy feathers. Before the gray tyrant, lashing the air furiously, had recovered from the surprise and shock of the collision, the shoveller drake was hidden amid the crowding reed stems.
With the wild things, as a rule, fear is a shadow which comes suddenly and passes quickly. For perhaps ten minutes the shoveller remained in the cover of the reeds, resting quietly in the shallow water lapping amid the smooth, straight stems. Then he turned, paddled back to the open, and head-
