I felt my blood fairly boil, and longed to cry out: “You beasts! You know that we don’t kill everything we see! We leave that to cockneys, and foreigners.” But just as I had no power of movement, so I seemed to have no power of speech. And suddenly a little voice, high up over me, piped down: “They never shoot us larks.” I have always loved the lark; how grateful I felt to that little creature--till it added: “They do worse; they take and shut us up in little traps of wire till we pine away! Ferocious brutes!” In all my life I think I never was more disappointed! The second cougar spoke: “He once passed within spring of me. What do you say, friends; shall we go for him?” The shivering answer came from all: “Go for him! Ferocious brute! Oh, go for him!” And I heard the sound of hundreds of soft wings and pads ruffling and shuffling. And, knowing that I had no power to move an inch, I shut my eyes. Lying there motionless, as a beetle that shams dead, I felt them creeping, creeping, till all round me and over me was the sound of nostrils sniffing; and every second I expected to feel the nip of teeth and beaks in the fleshy parts of me. But nothing came, and with an effort I reopened my eyes. There they were, hideously close, with an expression on their faces that I could not read; a sort of wry look, every nose and beak turned a little to one side. And suddenly I heard the old fox saying: “It’s impossible, with a smell like that; we could never eat him!” From every one of them came a sort of sniff or sneeze as of disgust, and as they began to back away I distinctly heard the hyena mutter: “He’s not wholesome--not wholesome--the ferocious brute!” The relief of that moment was swamped by my natural indignation that these impudent birds and beasts should presume to think that I, a British sportsman, would not be good to eat. Then that beastly hyena added: “If we killed him, you know, and buried him for a few days, he might be tolerable.” An old cock grouse called out at once: “Go back! Let us hang him! _We_ are always well hung. They like us a little decayed--ferocious brutes! Go back!” And once more I felt, from the stir and shuffle, that my fate hung in the balance; and I shut my eyes again, lest they might be tempted to begin on them. Then, to my infinite relief, I heard the cougar--have we not always been told that they were the friends of man?--mutter: “Pah! It’s clear we could never eat him fresh, and what we do not eat at once we do not touch!” All the birds cried out in chorus: “No! That would be crow’s work.” And again I felt that I was saved. Then, to my horror, that infernal loon shrieked: “Kill him and have him stuffed--specimen of Ferocious Brute! Or fix his skin on a tree, and look at it--as he did with me!”