One of the falconers had sent up a cast of hawks, and an Arab had
ridden forward in the hope of driving some ducks out of the reeds;
but instead a heron rose and, flopping his great wings, went away,
stately and decorative, into the western sky. The hawks were far
away down on the horizon, and there was a chance that they might
miss him; but the falconer waved his lure, and presently the hawks
came back; it was then only that the heron divined his danger, and
instead of trying to outdistance his pursuers as the other birds had
done, and at the cost of their lives, he flopped his wings more
vigorously, ringing his way up the sky, knowing, whether by past
experience or by instinct, that the hawks must get above him. And
the hawks went up, the birds getting above the heron. Soon the
attack would begin, and Owen remembered that the heron is armed with
a beak on which a hawk might be speared, for is it not recorded that
to defend himself the heron has raised his head and spitted the
descending hawk, the force of the blow breaking the heron's neck and
both birds coming down dead together.
"Now will this happen?" he asked himself as he watched the birds now
well above the heron.
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