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 balance, the swift movement carried him just beyond the danger line.

Again the long, thin, needlelike fangs, thrusting forward out of the great serpent's hugely gaping jaws, clashed against the heavily shafted feathers of the eagle's outstretched wing as he strove with a desperate flapping of his pinions to regain his footing; and again the dark-brown feathers were sprinkled, but not so plentifully as before, with pale-yellow fluid. Once more the king had won, and he seemed to know it. Proudly erect he stood, his white head held high, his shining eyes, deep under their frowning brows, glaring defiance.

Jen Murray the marshman, thrusting his way with the aid of his stick through the outermost fringe of the cassena thicket, realized anew that he had never before seen an eagle as splendid as this one. As Jen stepped out into the open his eyes were fixed upon the king, appraising with the enjoyment of a connoisseur the great bird's beautifully molded form, clear-cut as marble, the gleaming whiteness of his head, neck and tail contrasting vividly with the rich dark brown of his big broad-shouldered body and his wings. For the moment, the marshman forgot everything else, even the Eagle Stone itself, in wonder at the size and the dauntless bearing of the feathered monarch standing there before him,