Page:Wisdom of the Wilderness (1923).pdf/133

 clutched convulsively at the dandy curled tips of his tail as he vanished.

With his arrowy speed, his precision of stroke, his audacity and fiery spirit, the blue goshawk was little accustomed to the experience of being balked of his prey. With a sharp yelp of wrath he swept up from the water on a long, graceful curve, and sailed back low above the bittern's island seeking other prey. And his piercing gaze fell upon the bittern, standing rigid beside the nest.

His swoop was instantaneous, straight and swift as a bolt from a crossbow. But that coiled steel spring of the bittern's neck was even swifter; and as his talons struck downward, the bittern's dagger thrust caught him in the very center of the impending claw, splitting the foot fairly and disabling it. Nevertheless, by the shock of the attack, the bittern was borne downward, and would have been caught in the breast or throat by the other talon, but at the same instant his watchful mate, who had half risen on the nest that her eggs might not be crushed in the mêlée, delivered her thrust. It went true. It caught the goshawk full in the base of the neck, pierced clean through, and severed the spine. And in a wild confusion of sprawled legs and pounding wings, the three great birds fell in a heap in the grass, just beyond the nest.