ed the others to start theirs.

But it was an unholy feast. Cob tugged and tore like a butcher without
any knives. At times he nearly fell backwards, when the meat gave way;
at times he bolted, and gulped, and choked horribly; at times he was
nearly standing upon his head, and at other times upon his tail; and,
in case the others should find the woolly outside, where they alone
could feed, too easy, he was continually breaking off, to rush--a
red-headed demon from hell now--at the raven, or glare at the crows and
remove them yards, as if his eyes could kill. As for the herring-gull,
he raced and danced in a crazy circle round his giant clansman,
apparently smitten with delirium at the luscious titbits he was obliged
to watch vanishing down Cob's bright throat.

The raven, however, was growing desperate. He was under contract to
Fate to feed his wife. She would freeze there on her nest in the snow
among the icicle-studded ledges else. And every time he had got hold
of a big enough dainty to tug free and fly off with, Cob had cut in and
collared the said morsel. As a matter of fact, friend raven was a
better carver than the sea-pirate, had a beak better suited for the
grisly purpose. Finally, the black one got hold of a piece of meat,
and did not let go. He hung on, and, before anybody realized that he
had moved, Cob's yellow-and-red-painted bill--nearly all red now--had
closed upon that raven's neck. There was one wild, asthmatical croak
from the raven, a whirl of sturdy black and overshadowing
black-and-white wings, and the raven was jerked clean head-over-heels,
where, among the heather, he lay for a brief second, kicking
ignominiously, on his sable back.

Here the crows fled to strategic positions upon bowlders, waist-deep in
heather, hard by, expecting a like fate, and leaving the herring-gull
to gobble up what he could in the confusion, and risk his life in the
process, when suddenly, above the beating of wings and the hiss of
wind, all distinctly heard, and jumped at, the sound of a single,
horrible, instantaneous, metallic clash.

Cob's agonized yell, the clash itself, and the whir and rush of wings,
as every bird there present literally flung itself into the air, seemed
really, though of course they were not, coincident--such is the
quickness with which these wild creatures act. But Cob alone remained.

He stopped in mid-spring horribly, and suddenly, as if a Hand had
reached up and plucked him ba