The next moment the cause of their agitation became visible. There were a number of huge black flying shapes which pursued them. But the inexplicable thing was that the hunted birds did not fly from their enemies across the open sky which stretched away to the horizon. Rather, as though held back by some invisible wall, they swerved and dodged backwards and forwards, while their pursuers, with huge black slower-beating wings stretched across the sky, were always heading them back, but seemed themselves to be of no mind to follow them closely. For some time I watched the duel, while the black hunters gradually closed upon their intended victims, till they had no space left to manœuvre, and were becoming crowded overhead, yet still with no bird going over the invisible boundary within which the deadly game was played. Then came the last act of the drama. The desperate quarry turned and tried to dart backward, through the dark line of the beaters. Many--unless they had other enemies beyond my line of sight--must have succeeded. Many were struck by the heavy wings, so that they spun upwards, stunned or dead, and a long neck shot out to snap them as they descended. Screams of syren-like exultation deafened the sky. Then a cornered bird must have crossed the invisible boundary which they had avoided so desperately. Like a stone it fell instantly. For a moment, as the glossy leaves parted, and the pink tongues dragged it in, I had the sight of a dove-like bird, of a wedgwood-blue colour, but with a very long and slender beak, curving slightly downward. In size it resembled the large pigeons, called runts, which are bred for eating in Italy. It was the most familiar-seeming thing, except the friendly stars, that I had yet seen. But I had no time for such thoughts now. Its attacker, perhaps misled by the error of the bird it followed, must have got at least one of its wide-spreading wings above that fatal vacancy. Down it came also, though more slowly, turning in the air, striving with desperate flutterings to recover balance in a space between the cliff and the region of its terror, which was too narrow to give its wings full freedom. It came down on the path quite near me; the great flapping vans making a wind against which I stood with difficulty. Then it closed them, and gained its feet, and looked round, with a monstrous long-necked head reaching out to either side like a hen’s as it did so. It was not black, as it had looked to be in the sunlight, but of a dull-brown colour, inclining on the head and neck to a dark yellow. It was not feathered at all, but the skin, which lay in loose folds and ridges, which it could inflate at will, and which had no doubt served to break its fall, was of a leathery texture, and the wide-spreading wings were of a similar material.