uge bird's legs. His teeth sank
deep, there was a snapping and grinding of tendon and bone, and a
hissing squawk of pain and fear came from above him as the owl made a
mighty effort to launch himself free. As the five-foot pinions beat the
air Peter was lifted from the ground. But the owl's talons were
hopelessly entangled in the cloth, and the two fell in a heap again.
Peter scarcely sensed what happened after that, except that he was
struggling against death. He closed his eyes, and the leg between his
jaws was broken and twisted into pulp. The wings beat about him in a
deafening thunder, and the owl's beak tore at his flesh, until the pool
of moonlight in which they fought was red with blood. At last something
gave way. There was a ghastly cry that was like the cry of neither bird
nor beast, a weak flutter of wings, and Gargantua of the Air staggered
up into the treetops and fell with a crash among the thick boughs of
the spruce.

Peter raised himself weakly, the severed leg of the owl dropping from
his jaws. He was half blinded. Every muscle in his body seemed to be
torn and bleeding, yet in his discomfort the thrilling conviction came
to him that he had won. He tensed himself for another attack, hugging
the ground closely as he watched and waited, but no attack came. He
could hear the flutter and wheeze of his maimed adversary, and slowly
he drew himself back--still facing the scene of battle--until in a
farther patch of gloom he turned once more to his business of following
the trail of Jolly Roger McKay.

There was no mark of bravado in his advance now. If he had possessed an
over-growing confidence, Gargantua's attack had set it back, and he
stole like a shifty fox through the night. Driven into his brain was
the knowledge that all things were not afraid of him, for even the
snapping beaks and floating gray shapes to which he had paid but little
attention had now become a deadly menace. His egoism had suffered a
jolt, a healthful reaction from its too swift ascendency. He sensed the
narrowness of his escape without the mental action of reasoning it out,
and his injuries were secondary to the oppressive horror of the uncanny
combat out of which he had come alive. Yet this horror was not a fear.
Heretofore he had recognized the ghostly owl-shapes of night more or
less as a curious part of darkness, inspiring neither like nor dislike
in him. Now he hated them, and ever after his fangs gleamed white when
one of th