g hold of a flash
of forked lightning by the point. It was--great!

Still, flight _is_ flight, and lifting-power is lifting-power. Gulo,
even Gulo, could not get over that. He could not stop those vast vans
from flapping; and as they flapped they rose, the eagle rose,
he--though it was like the skinning of his back alive--rose too,
wriggling ignominiously, raging, foaming, snapping, kicking, but--he
rose.

Slowly, very slowly, the great bird lifted his terrible prey up and
up--ten, twenty, thirty, forty feet, but no higher. That was the limit
of his lift, the utmost of his strength; and at that height parallel
with the ridge, he began to carry the wolverine along, the wolverine
that was going mad with rage in his grasp.

It was a mistake, of course--a mistake for the wolverine to be out on
the open ridge in stark daylight; another mistake for the eagle,
presuming on his fine, lustful pride of strength, to attack him.

And then suddenly Gulo got his chance. It hit him bang in the face,
nearly blinding him as it passed--the tree-top. Like lightning Gulo's
jaws clashed shut upon it, his claws gripped, and--he thought his back
was going to come off whole. But he stuck it. He was not called Gulo
the Indomitable for nothing. And the eagle stopped too. He had to,
for he would not let go; nor would Gulo.

An awful struggle followed, in the middle of which the pine-top broke,
gave way, and, before either seemed to know quite what was happening,
down they both came, crashing from branch to branch, to earth.

The fall broke the king of the birds' hold, but not the fighting fury
of the most hated of all the beasts. He rose up, half-blind, almost
senseless, but mad with rage beyond any conception of fury, did old
Gulo, and he hurled himself upon that eagle.

What happened then no man can say. There was just one furious mix-up
of whirling, powdered snow, that hung in the air like a mist, out of
which a great pinion, a clawing paw, a snapping beak, a flash of fangs,
a skinny leg and clutching, talons, a circling bushy tail appeared and
vanished in flashes, to the accompaniment of stupendous flappings and
abominably wicked growls.

* * * * * *

That night the lone wolf, scouting along the ridge-top, stopped to
sniff intelligently at the scattered, torn eagle's feathers lying about
in the trampled snow, at the blood, at the one skinny, mailed, mightily
taloned claw still clutching br