154 THE ‘FIGHTER FROM FIGHTERSVILLE.’ 
nised our friend as being precisely and par- 
ticularly a rove-beetle the instant he cocked 
his tail, that being his tribe’s special eccentri- 
city, and, to judge by the instant retreat of 
the feathered behemoth, his tribe’s particular 
passport also. Perhaps the beetle was nasty 
to eat—very nasty, it may be—and perhaps the 
bird knew it; and the beetle knew that the 
bird knew it, and that is why he had calmly 
advertised himself so insolently in the face of 
apparently certain annihilation. 
The beetle, though, had in the meanwhile 
been upset by the rush of the bird’s wings, 
and had slid incontinently to the ground. He 
had just time to feel one of his legs catch, 
pull, and drag away bodily a sticky, silken 
line, when he hit the earth, head first, and 
was instantly pounced upon by an eight-legged 
creature with jaws. This was a spider, and, 
like most spiders—who resemble lions in 
trusting almost wholly to the element of sur- 
prise in their method of attack—this spider 
was very quick indeed. Moreover, she had 
real poison-fangs, charged, I think, with formic 
acid. But what are we to say of the beetle 
in that instant? He was a marvel! 
As this diminutive fighter of ours reached 
the ground, he must have seen the shadow 
leaping upon him out of the dark. He was 
