"Wait and see!" answered Uncle Andy, with the air of an oracle. "Well,
one night a streak of moonlight, like a long white finger, came in
through a crack above and lit up those two tiny huddled shapes in their
crevice. It came so suddenly upon them that Little Silk Wing, under
the touch of that blue-white radiance, stirred uneasily and half
unfolded his wings. The movement caught the great, gleaming eyes of an
immense brown hunting spider who chanced at that moment to be prowling
down the underside of the roof. He was one of the kind that does not
spin webs, but catches its prey by stealing up and pouncing upon it.
He knew that a little bat, when young enough, was no stronger than a
big butterfly, and its blood would be quite good enough to suck.
Stealthily he crept down into the brightness of that narrow ray,
wondering whether the youngster was too big for him to tackle or not.
He made up his mind to have a go at it. In fact, he was just gathering
his immense, hairy legs beneath him for that fatal pounce of his, when
he was himself pounced upon by a flickering shadow, plucked from his
place, paralyzed by a bite through the thorax, and borne off to be
devoured at leisure by a big bat which had just come in."
"Oh, I see," muttered the Child feelingly. He was himself a good deal
afraid of spiders, and he meant that he understood now why it was less
dangerous for little bats to go swinging wildly through the twilight
clinging to their mother's necks than to stay at home alone.
But Uncle Andy paid no heed to the interruption.
"On the following night," he continued, "Little Silk Wing and his
sister found themselves once more alone in the crevice at the end of
the beam. They knew nothing of the peril from which they had been
saved the night before, so they had learned no lesson. On this night
they were restless, for their mother had fluttered away, leaving them
both a little hungry. Hunting had been bad, and she had somewhat less
milk for them than their growing appetites demanded. When once more
that slender finger of moonlight, feeling its way through a chink in
the roof, fell upon them in their crevice, it was the little sister
this time that stirred and fluttered under its ghostly touch. She
stretched one wing clear out upon the beam, and it was with difficulty
that she restrained herself from giving vent to one of her
infinitesimally thin squeaks, tiny as a bead that would drop through
the eye of a needle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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