nunciation beyond the compass of a Sassenach tongue.

From my ambush I watched J. and the keeper embark. Far off as they were, the guarded rattle of the mooring chain, the cautious shift of oar and baling tin, even a muttered objurgation to the dog came clear to me across the water, but, as it were, in miniature and strangely belated. The raven had long gone. Deliberate comedian that he is, with all the vanity of a "people's idol," he had early decided that upon his life alone I had designs, and departed forthwith to the distant hills jeering like a guttersnipe.

The tufted duck, who had also watched my manœuvres with an alert wariness in his yellow eye, found the launching of the boat too much for his equanimity. Giving us all a wide berth, he rose upon the wing, steering due north into the wind.

Beyond the hill at my back, out of sight from where I crouched, he would have to cross a wide deep valley wherein a little trout stream formed our boundary. At the far side of this burn the ground rose in ever steeper and steeper slopes towards a wild jumble of hills and crags within the heart of which lay a mountain tarn. There, perchance, he might find greater peace.

I watched him go, the sun upon his wings. And as I watched a faint vague shadow flicked across the heather tops before my eyes. I looked up

quickly towards the sun. Out from the sun-dazzle, high up in the sky, sharply outlined against bright fleecy clouds, moved a dark speck, sickle shaped. One glance was enough. Once seen no one can ever mistake a peregrine falcon on the wing. The wings rake backwards in a tense curve like a Barbary pirate's lanteen sails. The torpedo-shaped body, very broad forward, tails away rapidly in a stream-line aft. It is this great breadth forward, where the great wing muscles are, which is a falcon's most noticeable characteristic. How many people realise that the breast of any bird they eat-twothirds of most birds' fleshis merely the engine of its flight?

But had the falcon seen the tufted duck's departure? For a moment or two I was in doubt. Deliberately, almost indolently, she swung up into the wind, hanging motionless on steady outstretched pinions. An instant later all my doubts were set at rest. With four or five rapid wing beats she gath ered full speed, dipped sharply downwards still in full flight, and then from that enormous altitude, a quarter of a mile or more, with wings closed, dropped sheer.

Speed has ever exercised an almost inexplicable fascination on the human race; and in all wild nature, from the mere speed of it alone, there is no more supremely exalting spectacle, nothing more worth a journey to the ends of the earth

to see, than the breath-stopping wonder of a wild falcon's stoop. Delivered from such a height, its ultimate velocity is very nearly incalculable. Falling almost perpendicularly downwards from the height of a thousand feet-a quite normal pitch-a falcon's final speed by the force of gravity alone must attain something like two hundred and fifty feet a second, or nearly three miles a minute. To this must be added the initial velocity with which she starts, probably another mile a minute-two hundred and forty miles an hour. I can believe it.

The little pointed wings of a tufted duck, with their rapid and incessant beats, can carry his sturdy little body a great pace through the air.

But rising as he was, and flying against a strongish breeze, his speed could hardly exceed sixty or seventy miles an hour, and that is a very generous estimate. For all the speed he appeared to make relative to the stooping falcon he might have been frozen to the sky.

It is hard to say at what exact moment the tufted duck realised his danger. I think it was almost as soon as the falcon first swung up into the wind. A duck on ordinary travel between one place and another will normally use only a half beat of the wing, just sufficient to keep a good "way on." The tufted duck was flying" all out," his wings going the full drive. There was little doubt he knew.

Not for nothing are the eyes of a duck set high up and well back in his head. He can see above and behind him almost as clearly as in front, a faculty which now stood him in good stead. He could not hope to outfly, he could only hope to dodge his terrible pursuer. And to do so with success demanded not only an agility of wing beyond the common and the utmost rapidity of action, but the most exact timing as well. A falcon's stoop, headlong and utterly reckless though it seems, is under complete controlthe control of a cool and prescient brain guided by the marvellous eyesight of a bird of prey. Should the tufted duck shift one moment too soon, the falcon could alter course upon the instant to counter it. Should he delay one fraction of a second too late, he would crash brokennecked and lifeless into the heather below, struck down by that living thunderbolt behind.

But the little tufted duck knew his job. He timed his shift to a nicety. On the very verge of the critical moment just the flicker of a wing, a slight sheer downwards and across, and the falcon flashed by within inches.

She flung herself up above her quarry again almost as fast as she came down; stooped again; and again missed by a bare inch. Twice and thrice again she strove to close with the still steadily retreating duck, and each time at the last moment he eluded her. They

were more or less on equal terms now. She had lost her main advantage-the enormous impetus of her first downward rush. Almost it seemed as if the duck was having the best of it, when the chase vanished from sight behind the hill.

Though I had little doubt of the result, I would have given much to see the end. The duck's one chance of safety was on or under the waters of the mountain tarn far away and high up among the hills. Long before he could make it, the falcon would have grappled and borne him to the ground. Strong on the wing as a duck is, he would have little hope of ultimate escape in that long three-mile beat to windward.

Half-heartedly I turned to the business in hand-almost too late. I had heard no shot from J. It was without warning, therefore, that a bunch of teal flying low along the water raced past my post. They were on me before I saw them, and my first barrel fired in fumbling haste was a clean miss. I retrieved complete disaster with the second barrel. One teal fell dead. Teal can fly, and the bird that fell, several yards behind the one I fired at, marked significantly the shortage of my forward allowance.

While waiting for the boat to pick up my teal from the water, I glanced back almost mechanically to the ridge top where the chase had disappeared. Hoping against hope, I searched all the sky above it. How I blessed the inspiration

which had made me bring a field-glass that morning. A great way off and very high up I caught sight of a dark speck. A tiny glint of white upon it told me it was the tufted duck. A still smaller speck, yet farther away and above it, was without doubt the falcon. Very rapidly they grew in size upon the object glass. Soon they were clearly recognisable. They were coming my way, fast and straight as an arrow from a bow.

The great height at which I first saw them made it easy to guess what had occurred. The falcon, weary of the futile scrimmage in the air, had mounted, swinging up in great spirals, to get above her quarry for a last decisive stoop. This had given the tufted duck a chance of escape, of which he had been quick to take advantage. He, too, had mounted

a duck can climb at a steep slant with surprising speed,and then, when the falcon in one of her upward spirals had for a moment swung wide of him and ahead, he had turned tail suddenly, and now with the wind behind him, dropped in a long downward slant back to the little loch he had so rashly left a few crowded moments ago.

Fast as the tufted duck had travelled outward bound, his homecoming upon the wind was many times as fast. But the falcon's speed was faster yet. She had started from a higher pitch, her downward slant was steeper. She was not dropping now with wings near shut, but

flying down with little eager flicks, passionate half-beats of her wings, which sent her leaping down the sky, and all the time she gained and gained.

It seemed only a second or two after I had picked them up beyond the range of unassisted eyesight that they were again above the nearer hill, and now the falcon was very close upon her quarry. There were only a few hundred yards to the water and to safety, but yard by yard the falcon gained. As he came nearer to his goal the tufted duck altered course to a yet steeper slant, the falcon now a bare yard behind.

In cold words it is impossible to give any idea of the speed of that last lap. As they came nearer, the rush of their headlong descent struck a crescendo chord upon the air like the tearing whistle of an approaching shell. The yard between them had shortened to a foot as they hurtled close above my head. But the duck was over the water now. Never for an instant did he alter the steep angle of his descent, never for a single wing-beat did he check the whirring vibration of his wings. Not for him a duck's habitual dainty descent upon the water with wings aback and tail and feet outspread to check his way, until at the last moment, with head prettily tucked in, he takes the water with the neat slither of a launched canoe. There was no time for such prettiness now; with neck full stretch and head out-thrust to

safety, his wings still going madly, he plunged headlong beneath the surface, the falcon so close upon him that the instant spout of upflung water shot up behind her and failed to wet her wings.

Anything less tough than the brawn and rubber of a duck would have smashed to a wisp of flesh and feathers by the impact of that appalling dive. But in less than half a minute he had bobbed up serenely to the surface, and though his beak was agape he appeared otherwise none the worse for his adventure.

And the falcon! In the days when the word meant something they called her "falcon gentle." "Saying things" is not her line. The rare and memorable spectacle which I had seen was to her a commonplace and everyday affair. Her easy spirals skyward betrayed no hint of heart-break or bad temper; a jaunty swagger rather as of a fox terrier who, after a hot half-playful scramble, has just succeeded in-treeing the domestic cat.

If this were fiction and not a true drama of wild life actually played out before my eyes, I might here pause upon this happy ending. But life has only one end. Whether that end is happy or no, humanity so far has been unable to decide. There is little more to tell. The boat was approaching. Neither J. nor the keeper had seen anything of the gallant little tufted duck's hairbreadth escape. He was now

swimming out towards the centre of the loch, I upon one side of him, the boat upon the other, the falcon somewhere high in the air above. Undecided, he lingered just too long. My "Don't shoot " was was unheeded, misunderstood. What to me would have been little less than heartless murder was to J. an unexpected and providential opportunity.

That evening, when

we

emptied the day's bag from the boot of the car, conspicuous among the duller brindlings and mottlings of grouse and snipe and teal, by which they assimilate so marvellously to all the varied tints of marsh and moor, there stood out all too plainly the bold contrast of black and white which is a tufted drake's peculiar glory. Kismet.

What else is there to say?

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