so from the breast of the
corpse. Then he approached it a little nearer, but before it came to
the touching point a sudden fear made him start back.

"What is it? What did you see?" cried the others.

"I'm not sure there wasn't a twitch of the eyelid," he replied.

"Never mind the eyelid--feel his heart," said one.

"That's all very well," he returned, "but how would you like it
yourself? Will _you_ come and do it?"

"No, no!" they all cried. "You have undertaken this, and must go
through with it."

Thus encouraged, he once more turned to the corpse, and again
anxiously began to examine the face. Now Martin had been watching
them through the slits of his not quite closed eyes all the time,
and listening to their talk. Being hungry himself he could not help
feeling for them, and not thinking that it would hurt him to be cut
up in pieces and devoured, he had begun to wish that they would
really begin on him. He was both amused and annoyed at their
nervousness, and at last opening wide his eyes very suddenly he cried,
"Feel my heart!"

It was as if a gun had been fired among them; for a moment they were
struck still with terror, and then all together turned and fled,
going away with three very long hops, and then opening wide their
great wings they launched themselves on the air.

For they were not little black men in black silk clothes as it had
seemed, but vultures--those great, high-soaring, black-plumaged
birds which he had watched circling in the sky, looking no bigger
than bees or flies at that vast distance above the earth. And when
he was watching them they were watching him, and after he had fallen
asleep they continued moving round and round in the sky for hours,
and seeing him lying so still on the plain they at last imagined
that he was dead, and one by one they closed or half-closed their
wings and dropped, gliding downwards, growing larger in appearance
as they neared the ground, until the small black spots no bigger
than flies were seen to be great black birds as big as turkeys.

But you see Martin was not dead after all, and so they had to go
away without their dinner.

CHAPTER X

A TROOP OF WILD HORSES

It seemed so lonely to Martin when the vultures had gone up out of
sight in the sky, so silent and solitary on that immense level plain,
that he could not help wishing them back for the sake of company.
They were an amusing people when they were walking round him,
conversing togeth