THE BIG BLOW. 233 
and bad language—was exciting to watch. 
The old rook, in the centre, simply sat on 
the prize, and waved his beak upwards in the 
air. When they had all done looking for 
the eel they couldn’t see, his little game was 
spotted by his own flock, and before you could 
cry out, that eel, seized by black beaks from 
all parts of the compass, parted, if I may so 
put it, several ways at once, and was seen no 
more. 
This little episode, however, was too much 
for the gulls—the herring-gulls, the common 
gulls, and the black-headed gulls. After all, 
the estuary was their domain, and not the 
rooks.. They rose like a white mist, and 
hung up above the rook flock—almost a solid, 
and a threatening, pall of beating wings and 
cries of execration. 
The old rook looked up, and then at the 
rest of the elders, who were looking at him 
and each other. Till then they had all gone 
about their jobs with a fine—if perhaps as- 
sumed—indifference; but there was no dis- 
daining that crowd above them now. Our 
old rook decided that it was about time the 
immediate landscape became empty of rook. 
So the chief of the elders rose with his black 
crew, and soared slowly away over the flats 
—a long, straggling chain of untidy, clumsy- 
3.W. P 
