Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida'.djvu/87

Rh in his sore extremity, there were still beauty and solace in the day.

Yet, as he gazed, the heavens were darkened, the sunlit morning became more loathsome than all the solitude and darkness of the night; wakened in the dawn and poised in air, drawn thither by the scent of blood, he saw the flocks of carrion-birds, the allies whom the assassins trusted to destroy all trace of their work, the keepers of the vigil of the dead! Cleaving the air and wheeling in the light, they gathered there, vulture and kite, raven and rock-eagle, coming with the sunrise to their carrion feast, sweeping downward into the defile with shrill and hideous clamour till they alit beside him, in their ravenous greed, upon the body of the mare, striking their beaks into her eyes and whetting their taste in her flesh, rending and lacerating, and disputing their prey.

Thus he had seen them, many a time, making their feast on the lion or camel of the East; and a sickness of loathing came upon him, and a horror unutterable;—bound in the bonds of death, and powerless to lift his arm against them, he must lie, half living and half dead, whilst the hungry hordes tore at his heart.

A cry broke from him, loud and terrible—a shout