Page:The Way of the Wild (1930).pdf/23

 ness that a man's eye could not have followed the motion, his head pivoted on his shoulders so that it faced the other way. The yellow eyes glowed with a fiercer light; the tall, hornlike ear tufts rose stiffly erect; the whole burly, rather fluffy body of the owl seemed to tighten and grow tense and hard. It must have been a sound that had warned him; yet this sound, if sound there was, could not have been heard at that distance by the keenest human ear.

The egrets fishing in the pool did not hear it. A clapper rail, walking along the margin close to the encircling wall of marsh grass, continued her walk undisturbed. The big blue crabs, moving about in the shallows, failed to take alarm. But Eyes o' Flame's marvelous ears had made no mistake.

Out of the marsh, precisely at the spot upon which the owl's eyes were fixed, bounded a slim, long, dark brown shape. Its first leap carried it with a splash into water which all but covered its short legs. Its second leap carried it still deeper, to a place where an instant before the claws of a crab had appeared momentarily, striking at something on the surface. Its third leap bore it shoreward again, snarling with anger; for the crab, warned by that first splash, had dodged and darted away in a cloud of muddy water.

Another half second and the mink would have regained the shelter of the tall marsh grass; but in that half second silent wings lowered over him, long