Page:The Way of the Wild (1930).pdf/66

 short wings, smiting the air rapidly, drove his heavy projectilelike body forward at high speed. But that speed had not been increased in the few minutes which had elapsed since the beginning of the chase; those wing beats had grown no more rapid. The big bird, unconscious of the stern, masterful pursuer racing after him and still far in his rear, was flying at the rate characteristic of the red-throated loon when migrating or when journeying overland from one feeding ground to another.

It was a journey of the latter sort that the loon was now undertaking. Having depleted the fish resources of one small mountain lake, he was in search of another; and since the mountain region was strange to him and lakes were very few and small, he was eagerly scanning the country over which he passed. He was in that country as the result of accident. A bird of the seacoast, whose summer home was the upper North, he had started on his return to Labrador, when a spring gale of unusual violence blew him far inland. Winging his way over forested ridges and valleys, he saw beneath him a small lake not unlike those of his Canadian home. Here he had alighted, and, finding the lake well stocked with fish, here he had been content to linger.

Spring came later to the mountains than to the coast, and when, as the days grew warmer, the migratory urge took hold of him again, the normal