Page:The Way of the Wild (1930).pdf/285

 per rails. When the rising waters flooded the low-lying grass plains and bathed the margins of the hummock itself they not only brought many big blue crabs, which the fox soon learned to capture and eat with relish, but they also drove scores of rails from the submerged marshes to the hum mock's shore. These noisy, rather stupid birds had little knowledge of any four-footed enemy except the mink. They moved about freely and boldly, although they were at a disadvantage in the darkness; and night after night the crippled fox, crouching motionless in the tall weeds close to the island's margin, dined on rail which had almost walked into her jaws.

But with the waning of the moon the tides went back to normal, filling the marsh creeks and rivulets, but no longer spreading across the grassy flats. Only rarely was the fox able to capture an unwary rail; the big crabs came no more; the marsh-rat burrows had nearly all been emptied of young; the scanty reptilian population of the hummock had ceased to exist. The blackbirds, grackles and fish crows, which often visited the place, were too wary to be captured. The fox was hungrier than she had ever been before when chance and her own desperation put her in possession of the bluebill duck which the wounded eagle had brought to the hummock in his claws.