ching
tail-point to the ground. There had been no warning--nothing! Just
that javelin from the ghost, and---the cat on his hindlegs, screaming
like a stricken devil, clawing at the ghost, now revealed as a very
big, long-legged bird which flapped. It flapped huge wings and danced
a grotesque dance, and it smelt abominably, with the stench of ten
fish-markets on a hot day.

Then at last, the cat clawing and yelling the whole time, the bird's
slow brain seemed to realize the mistake. The javelin, which was its
beak, was withdrawn from the protesting tail-tip hurriedly--to be
driven through the cat's skull as a sheer act of necessary
self-defense, I fancy. But the cat did not wait to see. Imagine the
infamy, the absolute sacrilege, from a cat's point of view, of spitting
a feline tail in that disgusting fashion. Why, if you only tread on
one, you hear about it in five-tenths of the average second, and offend
the supercilious owner for a month afterwards!

There was a vision, just a half-guessed vision, of our cat shooting
straight upwards through the air, and outwards over the still waters of
the dike; there was a number one splash that set the reflected stars
dancing, and the water-voles ("rats," if you like) bolting to their
holes; and there was the sighing "frou-frou-frou!" of great wings as
the big bird rose and fled majestically. There was the sucking gurgle
and drip-drip of a furred body leaving the water on the far side, eyes
that glared more hate than pen can set down, and a deep, low, malignant
feline curse. That cat had swum the rest of the way over the dike
which he could not jump.

The bird was only a heron, and that does not sound much unless you are
acquainted with the ways of the heron and all his beak implies. A
heron is one of those birds that can fight at need, and--knows it.
Moreover, in his long beak, set on his steel-spring neck, he has a
weapon of awful "piercefulness," and--knows that too. The bird is an
example of armed defense.

This one had merely been fishing for eels in that pessimistic way
peculiar to all fishermen, and seeing the tail-tip waving in the grass,
and nothing else, had mistaken the same for his quarry. And this will
be the easier to believe because we know, and probably the heron did
also, that eels are given at times to overland journeys on secret
errands of their own.

The cat crawled away down the dike in offended silence. He was wet,
and the only cat I ever