ystery--expanses of shattered, white granite, as it were,
fretted and scrawled with blackness--reaches of loneliness older than
time. So well is the mask of eternity assumed by the mutable moonlight
and the ephemeral ice.

Nearer and nearer across the waste drew the movement that marked the
incoming flood. Then from over the dyke-top floated a noiseless,
winnowing, sinister shape which seemed the very embodiment of the
desolation. The great white owl of the north, driven down from his
Arctic hunting-grounds by hunger, came questing over the ragged
levels. His long, soft-feathered wings moved lightly as a ghost, and
almost touched the ice-cakes now and then as his round, yellow eyes,
savagely hard and brilliant, searched the dark crevices for prey. With
his black beak, his black talons protruding from the mass of snowy
feathers which swathed his legs, and the dark bars on his plumage, one
might have fancied him a being just breathed into menacing and
furtive life by the sorcery of the scene.

Suddenly, with a motion almost as swift as light, the great owl
swooped and struck. Swift as he was, however, this time he struck just
too late. A spot of dark on the edge of an ice-cake vanished. It was a
foraging muskrat who had seen the approaching doom in time and slipped
into a deep and narrow crevice. Here, on the wet mud, he crouched
trembling, while the baffled bird reached down for him with vainly
clutching claws.

On either side of the two ice-cakes which had given the muskrat
refuge, was a space of open mud which he knew it would be death to
cross. Each time those deadly black talons clutched at him, he
flattened himself to the ground in panic; but there were several
inches to spare between his throat and death. The owl glared down with
fixed and flaming eyes, then gave up his useless efforts. But he
showed no inclination to go away. He knew that the muskrat could not
stay for ever down in that muddy crevice. So he perched himself bolt
upright on the very edge, where he could keep secure watch upon his
intended victim, while at the same time his wide, round eyes might
detect any movement of life among the surrounding ice-cakes.

The great flood-tides of Fundy, when once they have brimmed the steep
channels and begun to invade the vast reaches of the flats, lose
little time. When the baffled owl, hungry and obstinate, perched
himself on the edge of the ice-cake to wait for the muskrat to come
out, the roar of the inco