Page:The Way of the Wild (1930).pdf/241

 lotus fields, something happened that cured him of this habit.

He had not learned to look for peril from above. His periscope eyes, projecting from the surface, kept keen watch upon the river and the river margins, but they neglected the upper spaces of the air. He was swimming slowly when the blow fell, his body barely submerged; and the red shafts of the late sunlight, shimmering and glinting on the myriad wavelets of the river, must have deceived the great white-headed eagle hurrying homeward after a long journey to distant hunting grounds.

Perhaps the eagle had hunted vainly that day and, mistaking the young gator's submerged body for a slow-moving fish, decided that this was one of those rare occasions when he would deign to do his own fishing instead of having his underlings, the ospreys, perform that service for him. At any rate, the moment he saw the gator gliding slowly through the rippling shallows close to the muddy margin where the kingbirds perched on their snags, he closed his wide wings and plunged, his legs thrust downward, his trenchant talons spread to the utmost.

In a whirl of wind from wildly beating wings, and in a shower of spray, those claws struck the saurian's back and side just behind the forelegs. The leathery plates of his back were not pierced; but on