The skua stared, and as he stared a great terror seized him.  What more deadly form of death than themselves had they suddenly become aware of, to cause them to invite themselves into nowhere in that magic fashion?

In the dead silence that fell, he could hear nothing, see nothing.  Yet he felt—­indeed he knew—­something seemed to tell him, that a deadly foe was at hand.

Hours passed.  They were minutes really, but they seemed hours to him.  Nothing happened; nothing showed.  But the rats did not come back.  Therefore, whatever incarnation of death it was that removed them must be there still.  He knew that.  That lonely, wounded bird knew that.  And he was right.

Behind him, practically invisible, flat to the ground, a long, low, narrow, dark shape was lying crouched, creeping, creeping, creeping towards his tail.  Slowly, almost painfully slowly, it drew upon him gradually, so gradually that the distance between them could scarce be seen to lessen.  And soundlessly, so soundlessly that even his quick ears, trained far beyond the quickest human aural perception, could not hear it.

Then, so quickly that the eye could not follow it, the crouching form made its rush.

The skua was sitting motionless, with his head looking straight in front of him.  The dark form came from behind, and there would have been no time for the skua to move before the thing, whatever it was, had him by the back of the neck, and dead, save for one little tiny fact.  As it propelled itself forward, in the first bound, the claws of the beast’s hindpaw’s scraped upon a stone.  It was only a little sound, and it gave the skua barely a fraction of a second’s warning; but, he being a wild thing, it was enough.

Quick as light the bird had half turned upon one side, and flung up one claw and wing to cover his neck, whilst his head jerked round hindpart before in the same atom of time.

Thus it happened that the beast, unable to stop, found himself with his head and eyes being dug at by a hooked beak, and his jaws closed upon a skinny leg instead of upon the skua’s spinal column, as he had intended, which would have put the skua out of life like turning out a gas-jet.

And it was then, in that instant, that the moon chose to dodge from behind a cloud and reveal the beast as a big, long, lean, and hungry dog-stoat.  Probably he had thought that the skua was a gull, and a wounded one.  There is a difference, however, between the skuas and the gulls, though they bear a family likeness.  He discovered the difference now, and for the next few minutes was not overjoyed at the knowledge.

One cannot do much blood-sucking to weaken one’s prey out of a scrawny leg that resembles a twig wrapped round with leather.  And the stoat found this out, too, and he would have shifted his hold to the bird’s body like a flash, if he had been given a chance, but he never was.