struggling two.

It was a titanic contest to the blue jay, two monstrous giants fighting
to the death. All the other forest people had fled away in terror, but
the empty-headed blue jay, held by the terrible fascination, remained on
his bough, watching with dilated eyes. He saw the great beads of sweat
stand out on the face of each, he could hear the muscles strain and
creak, he saw the two fall to the ground, locked fast in each other's
arms, and then turn over and over, first the white face and then the red
uppermost, and then the white again.

The blue jay's eyes grew bigger and bigger as he watched a struggle such
as he had never beheld before. They were all one to him. It did not
matter to him whether white or red conquered, but he saw one thing that
they did not see. As they rolled over and over they had come to the very
brink of the hill, and the far side went down almost straight, a matter
of forty or fifty feet. But this made no impression upon him, because he
was only a blue jay with only a blue jay's tiny brain.

The two monstrous giants were now hanging over the edge of the
precipice, and still, in their furious struggles, they did not know it.
The blue jay, perceiving in a dim way that something tremendous was
about to happen in his world, longed to chatter abroad the advance news
of it, but his tongue was paralyzed in his throat, and his eyes were red
with increasing dilation.

The two, still locked fast in each other's arms, went further. Then they
realized where they were, and there was a simultaneous writhe to get
back again. It was too late. The blue jay saw them hang for a moment on
the brink and then go crashing into the void. His paralyzed voice came
back to him, and, chattering wildly with terror, he flew away from the
terrible scene.

CHAPTER VIII

THE SHADOW IN THE WATER

Henry Ware and the Wyandot warrior were clasped so tightly in each
other's arms that their hold was not broken as they fell. They whirled
over and over, rolling among the short bushes on the steep slope, and
then they dropped a clear fifteen feet or more, striking the hard earth
below with a sickening impact.

Both lay still a half minute, and then Henry rose unsteadily to his
feet. Fortune had turned her face toward him and away from the Wyandot.
The warrior had been beneath when they struck, and in losing his life
had saved that of his enemy. Henry had suffered no broken bones, nothing
more than bruises, and