Page:The Way of the Wild (1930).pdf/149

 tactics. It was this fact that had caught the attention of the soaring eagle and brought him down from his station in the upper air so that he might be ready to take instant advantage of the opportunity which at any moment might be afforded him.

There was every sign that he would not have long to wait. The dolphins, showing six feet or so of their rounded backs above the surface, were charging the flanks of a great army of mullet which filled the wide winding creek from bank to bank and from bend to bend. Dashing at high speed into the shimmering ranks in the shallow water close to the right-hand shore, the big sea mammals, wonderfully lithe and agile in spite of their bulk, were spreading consternation among the finny phalanxes.

Swift as the mullet were, the dolphins were swifter still; and just ahead of them, as they charged side by side through the shallows, a silvery shower of fish, each of them from six to eight inches in length, curved through the air and rained down into the water. It was this rain of fish rather than the dolphins themselves that interested the eagle, circling and poising, eagerly awaiting his chance. Sooner or later, he knew, one of those leaping mullet, fleeing madly before the oncoming dolphins, would leap in the wrong direction and fall upon the mud between the marsh and the water's edge. Then, if