Page:Wisdom of the Wilderness (1923).pdf/163

 angrily for a few seconds, then circled away to seek another quarry. He knew that he would be left in peace to enjoy what he might take.

But this time, in his exasperated anxiety to more than make good his loss, his ambition somewhat overreached itself. To borrow the pithy phrase of the backwoodsman, he "bit off more than he could chew."

One of these big, gray lake trout, or "togue," which as a rule lurk obstinately in the utmost depths, rose slowly to investigate the floating body of a dead swallow. Pausing a few inches below the surface, he considered as to whether he should gulp down the morsel or not. Deciding, through some fishy caprice, to leave it alone (possibly he had once been hooked, and broken himself free with a painful gullet!), he was just turning away to sink lazily back into the depths, when something like a thunderbolt crashed down upon the water just above him and fiery pincers of horn fixed themselves deep into his massive back.

With a convulsive surge of his broad-fluked, muscular tail he tried to dive, and for a second drew his assailant clean under. But in the next moment the osprey, with a mighty beating of wings which threshed the water into foam, forced him to the surface, and lifted him clear. But he