Where Neewa and Miki stood a grown wolf would have paused, and turned back; the fox would have slunk away, hugging the ground; even the murderous-hearted little ermine would have peered in with his beady red eyes, unafraid, but turned by instinct back into the open timber.  For here, in spite of the stillness and the gloom, there was life.  It was beating and waiting in the ambush of those black pits.  It was rousing itself, even as Neewa and Miki went on deeper into the silence, and eyes that were like round balls were beginning to glow with a greenish fire.  Still there was no sound, no movement in the dense overgrowth of the trees.  Like the imps of MUHNEDOO the monster owls looked down, gathering their slow wits—­ and waiting.

And then a huge shadow floated out of the dark chaos and passed so close over the heads of Neewa and Miki that they heard the menacing purr of giant wings.  As the wraith-like creature disappeared there came back to them a hiss and the grating snap of a powerful beak.  It sent a shiver through Miki.  The instinct that had been fighting to rouse itself within him flared up like a powder-flash.  Instantly he sensed the nearness of an unknown and appalling danger.

There was sound about them now—­movement in the trees, ghostly tremours in the air, and the crackling, metallic snap—­snap—­snap over their heads.  Again Miki saw the great shadow come and go.  It was followed by a second, and a third, until the vault under the trees seemed filled with shadows; and with each shadow came nearer that grating menace of powerfully beaked jaws.  Like the wolf and the fox he cringed down, hugging the earth.  But it was no longer with the whimpering fear of the pup.  His muscles were drawn tight, and with a snarl he bared his fangs when one of the owls swooped so low that he felt the beat of its wings.  Neewa responded with a sniff that a little later in his life would have been the defiant WHOOF of his mother.  Bear-like he was standing up.  And it was upon him that one of the shadows descended—­a monstrous feathered bolt straight out of darkness.

Six feet away Miki’s blazing eyes saw his comrade smothered under a gray mass, and for a moment or two he was held appalled and lifeless by the thunderous beat of the gargantuan wings.  No sound came from Neewa.  Flung on his back, he was digging his claws into feathers so thick and soft that they seemed to have no heart or flesh.  He felt upon him the presence of the Thing that was death.  The beat of the wings was like the beat of clubs:  they drove the breath out of his body, they blinded his senses, yet he continued to tear fiercely with his claws into a fleshless breast.

In his first savage swoop Oohoomisew, whose great wings measured five feet from tip to tip, had missed his death-grip by the fraction of an inch.  His powerful talons that would have buried themselves like knives in Neewa’s vitals closed too soon, and were filled with the cub’s thick hair and loose hide.  Now he was beating his prey down with his wings until the right moment came for him to finish the killing with the terrific stabbing of his beak.  Half a minute of that and Neewa’s face would be torn into pieces.