They ran breathlessly across the cobwebby bridges, around Goat Island, then to the shore, then to the elevator, and descended to the ice-bridge; but, above the angry battle of Niagara, arose the plaintive, dying cries of scores of snow-white birds, the shouts of gathering sightseers.  Against the ruthless edges of ice lay, bleeding and broken, what was left of that superb company homeward bound.  Their poor, twisted legs, their crushed heads, their flattened bodies, their pitiful, dying struggles, would melt a heart of stone.  No more those graceful throats would whistle through the April airs, beneath the early suns and the late morning stars.  The sweet, wild chorus was stilled forever.

By the time Jimmy and his father arrived, crowds of people had descended with stones and sticks anything they could lay their hands on—­and were beating the remaining spark of life out of the helpless birds, then seizing and quarrelling over the bodies, without one word of pity or regret for the dreadful catastrophe, so long as they could secure the coveted specimens of this rare migratory bird.  Then Jimmy noticed that some few had actually escaped injury, but, before he could reach them, older and stronger people had rushed upon the terrified and weakened creatures, and were clubbing them to death.

“Stop it! stop it!” he shouted.  “Those birds are not injured!  Save them!  Let them go!”

“Not if I know it!” yelled back a huge fellow with the face of a greedy demon.  “Why, these birds are worth twenty dollars apiece!” he blurted, “and I’m going to have every one of them.”

Down, down, down, went one after another as they tried to rise and spread their magnificent wings, until only one remained.  With the quickness of a cat, Jimmy flung his thin little body between the flopping victim and the upraised club.

“You strike that swan if you dare!” he cried, fiercely, glaring up at the would-be murderer with indignant eyes.

“Hello, bantam!  You after twenty dollars, too?” sneered the man.

“No; I’m after this swan’s life, and I’m going to have it!” growled the boy.  “The bird is mine!”

“Yes, Jimmy,” said his father, approaching sadly.  “And it’s the only one that has life.  I have counted one hundred and sixteen, either dead or slain."*

[It is a fact that occurred in April, 1908, that a company of one hundred and sixteen whistling swans were carried over Niagara Falls, and that the only one which escaped the weapons of destroyers was rescued by a little boy, and cared for exclusively by him.]

The boy took off his coat, wrapping it about the superb bird, then carried it carefully to the elevator, and, soon after reaching the summit of the shore, had it fed and tended, then gently crated for shipment home.  The tired bird submitted without protest to being measured.  From tip to tail it measured fifty-one inches, with the magnificent expansion of wing of eighty-one inches, the only survivor of that glorious white company that was whistling its way to the North.  And it was the kindly, boyish hand of little Jimmy Duffy, youngest member of the “Animal Rescue Club,” that had saved it from a crueller death than even old, heartless Niagara could have given it, and it was his hands that gently removed the bars of the crate in the Duffys’ big backyard.