48 AMID THE HIGH HILLS 
the hobby has responded to your challenge, and 
now exhibits speed for which — glorious flier 
though he be — I should never have given him 
credit. Mounting with ease above his prospective 
prey, the lithe hawk compels him to describe an 
arc and once again to start a life — or death — 
struggle in a headlong slant across the clearing. 
That flight is his last — the swift has shot his bolt. 
Now inches only separate the birds, you could 
cover both with a very large handkerchief. Next 
instant the hawk rises straight and stoops strongly, 
pursuer and pursued become one. Binding to 
his quarry the hawk is away over the trees at my 
back without so much as the most momentary 
pause in the continuation of his eminently success- 
ful ' shikar.' Indeed, this continuity of action 
was possibly the most pleasing part of a praise- 
worthy performance, since you might reasonably 
have expected a break — however trivial — after 
what must have been a long and arduous chase. 
As a fact, the death-stroke was so featly and 
rapidly administered that, except that where a 
moment before there had been two birds there 
was now only one, and that a muffled clap and a 
few small dusky feathers twirling aimlessly in the 
summer breeze suggested some sort of untoward 
