But Cob would not oblige.  He had not got a broken and crushed leg, as the raven possibly expected.  He was not injured, as he should have been, according to program; only puffed.  The mercy of Allah had seen to it that some teeth of that instrument of vile torture that had hold of him were broken off, and that his leg should have been caught in the gap thus formed.  Moreover, the trap had not been looked after; it was rusty, and did not shut quite properly.  The spring was weak, or some grit had got in, or something, and a smart rat would have got out of it easily, but a rat is not a gull, and knows too much.

Thereafter, nothing happened for a long while.  Cob’s first delirium seemed to have spent him, and perhaps taught him how much a leg can hurt when tugged by the full lift of sixty-nine-inch wings, especially when one tries to whirl round upon it when it cannot turn.

The raven sat on his lichen-decorated, snow-draped bowlder, hands in pockets, so to speak, abominably untidy, with a pessimistic hunch of the shoulders, but a light in his eyes, a strangely malignant, devilishly roguish leer, that belied his appearance.  Perhaps he was waiting to see if Cob during his struggles obligingly touched off any further deadly surprises that might lie hidden in the vicinity.  One never knows.  He had seen a gray crow double-catch himself in two traps lying close to one another—­once.

Nothing happening, however, that raven presently sailed in on his fine work.  He broke his neutrality with a sudden dry rustle of wings, and clumsily half-hopped, half-heavily napped, down to Cob, lying there still and silent, but very much awake, upon the snow.  He almost seemed to be rubbing his hands, or, rather, his claws, that ebon rascal.  This was, indeed, a game after his own heart.

Cob never moved when the raven arrived.  I suppose he knew all about ravens, and what one may expect from them.  He only stared at him with one cold eye, a tense, lop-sided stare; and he mouthed a little—­if one may be permitted the expression—­with his beak, like a man moistening his lips.

The raven looked him over critically, leeringly, insolently, with a hateful air of ownership.  Then the raven sharpened the gouge thing which he called his beak—­wheep-wheep—­upon a stone, as birds do, and tightened his feathers, as if almost visibly tucking up his sleeves for—­well, for the job.

Then he tweaked Cob’s tail, apparently just to see how much alive he was.  But Cob did not move, beyond drawing one webbed leg—­the free one—­up under him.

Then the raven dug him under the wing—­punched him in the ribs, so to speak.  But Cob did nothing more than cringe—­cringe from head to hind-toe, like a worm.

Then suddenly, startlingly suddenly, with the full stroke, the dreaded pickax blow, of all the ravens, he let drive straight at Cob’s clear, shining eye—­the left one, with which Cob, with his head twisted, had all along been regarding him.  He had disclosed his hand, that raven.  It was devil’s work.