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 before, he should have sought safety beneath the surface where he could cling to some submerged grass root or reed stem until his breath failed or the eagle had passed on. It was too late for this expedient now. His broken pinion hampered him sadly whenever he tried to force his buoyant body under water; and only an infinitesimal moment was left to him. If he tried to dive now those trenchant talons, already yawning for their prey, would sink deep into his back before the water closed over him.

In that final infinitesimal moment a strange chance intervened. The shoveller did not know that, in the densest growth of reeds close to the water's edge, round yellow eyes, set in a long, narrow, snakelike head, had watched, at first with languid interest, this drama of the river flats. He did not know that, at the moment when the gray tyrant half-closed his wings and shot downward through the singing air, sudden fear had flamed in those eyes, and the long javelin-bill in front of the snakelike head had sagged open with fright. Neither the fleeing duck nor the plunging eagle was aware that a great blue heron had been standing motionless in the reeds, until, with a terrified squawk, the tall bird spread its ash-blue wings and, with craning neck and trailing legs, flapped upward.

The heron had been facing the lagoon. Either