1886, } The Torture of the Fish-Hawk. 227 
increasing despair in the frightened crys This went on for more 
than half an hour. Every effort at retreat was intercepted. During 
all the time the hawk kept up an incessant flapping of its wings, 
‘and its physical endurance was giving way under the protracted 
strain. This was apparent from the changing tone of its scream, 
which varied through all the gamut of despair, from unreasoning 
terror, to supplicating misery. It was the Roman gladiator’s 
“ Cæsar, the dying salute thee,” with the ambition left out. 
The frigate-bird at length seemed impatient. It more promptly 
answered the movements of the hawk, and urged compliance with 
greater vigor, and finally introduced a new feature into the proceed- 
ings. Swooping upwards for one hundred feet it turned head fore- 
most, and plunged beneath the hawk, turning completely over as 
it did so, and passing to the front vaulted upwards, and down 
again in the same path, thus describing an elliptical orbit around 
its victim. It swung near the hawk round the lower curve, causing 
upward flight, until at length in an exhausted condition it was in- 
troduced into the company of its tormenters which had been de- 
scending from high levels and were now about four hundred 
yards above the water. Its strength was now well nigh exhausted. 
Its cry was scarcely audible, and it barely had the power of di- 
recting its movements. In whichever way it went, excepting one, 
a black terror confronted it. It could rise unimpeded, but found 
resistance to every other course. It struggled upwards for some 
four hundred yards further, until the distance was so great as to 
make it difficult to keep the movements in the field of the glass, 
when it gave up the task, and rapidly floundered over and over 
through the air, its muscular power exhausted, and its mass sur- 
rendered to the gravitating force. Down it came, the whole half- 
Score of enemies circling about it, until it struck the water near 
the beach in the shallows of the offing. The tide was running 
out and the water on the flat not over a foot in depth. 
: Supposing the play to be out I was proceeding to examine the 
victim when it was evident that more was tocome. The hawk 
was not dead and would at intervals raise its head from beneath 
the water to breathe. It had not strength to submerge its body, 
and with the vital air came a vision of the hovering terror. Down 
went its head with a gurgling murmur, and those black demons a ioe 
would alight upon it with their miserable puny feet and push Eoo 
entirely beneath the surface. 
VOL. XX,—No. 111, 6 
