ving over the crest,
half-demented with anxiety to cover her eggs from that stony stare of
the sea-rover; and Cob, seeing where she had come from, surrendered
himself to the gale, hurtled down-wind, veered, tacked, circled,
rocking, and came down in a series of his oblique plunges--smack-bang
into the middle of a gory dinner-party, consisting of the male raven,
five gray or hooded crows, and one silver herring-gull, feasting upon
the carcass of a dead sheep.

Every head went up, every eye blinked, every wing half-opened, every
beak shut tight as Cob, whom everybody had thought to be miles away by
that time, threw forward his wings, umbrella-fashion, flung them up,
hat-fashion, fanning wide his tail, dropped his giant webbed feet, and
came to anchor with a rush. Then he folded those wonderful pinions of
his, foot by rustling foot, stared stonily at the amazed, mute company
around him, and, throwing back his immaculate, smooth, low-browed,
spotless head, laughed to the winds, hoarsely, loudly, wildly--a rude,
baleful, transport of mirth:

"How-how-how-how-how!"

The raven did not laugh. He had to feed his sitting wife--not counting
his big self--in that bitter weather, and he was pluming himself upon
having turned the eagle from sight of this gift banquet from Providence
as well as his nest. The gray crows saw no cause for merriment,
remembering how big the great gull was, and how small are these little,
long-wooled, black-faced hill sheep. Moreover, sheep do not often
oblige by getting turned turtle in a cleft of rock, and being unable to
right themselves before poor, starving, wild hunters--I won't swear
who, but it was not the raven _this_ time--can come and peck their eyes
out.

Cob looked at them again--all five of the gray crows sitting staring
straight down their own black gouge-beaks, hunched, cold, out-at-heels,
and dejected. Then he laughed again--burst into another wild, jeering
fit of merriment, and fell to work.

First of all, he pointed out to the raven--his beak was the
pointer--that he was sitting upon the choicest portion of that sheep,
and must make way therefrom _instantly_. Next, he turned his head and
looked--only looked--at a gray crow that had presumed, upon the turning
of his broad, black back, to recommence feeding, and that hooded crow
moved one yard in one second--out of reach. And next, Cob, who
apparently loved discipline and cherished good manners, started his
banquet, and allow