Beating his good wing, tasting the blood that quickly swelled into his beak, he tumbled off with the wind and struck into the thickets on the far side of the river mouth. The branches tore him. Wind with rage, he thrust up and clattered his beak, challenging, but when he had fallen over twice, he knew that the trailing wing would not carry, and then heard the boots of the hunter among the stones in the riverbed, and, seeing him loom at the edge of the bushes, crept back among the thickest brush and was still. When he saw the boots pause before him, he reared back, his beak open but soundless, his great eyes hard and very shining. The boots passed on.