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Now, our black-backed jackal was not a young beast, and he was up to most wild-folks' games which was as well. He approached the corpse with caution, and as he poised for the last spring the corpse was at his throat. Black-back, however, was not there, but his tail was, and the side-striped one got a mouthful of the bushy black tip of that.
In sight from my roof are three tiny patches of the harbor; sometimes a fourth, when the big red-funneled liner is gone from her slip. Down to the water of the harbor in flocks from the north come other winter visitors, the herring and black-backed gulls. Often during the winter I find them in my sky. One day they will cross silently over the city in a long straggling line.
The latter was ominously loud and he began to run. When he had gone some distance, he tried another shot and disturbed two black-backed gulls that made a noise like hoarse laughter as they flew overhead. This was all, and he felt that the gulls were mocking him. He was getting anxious, and ran on until he was forced to stop for breath, as the fog began to lift.
No wonder that three different sorts of sea-gulls the herring gull, the lesser black-headed gull, and the black-backed gull have gathered about us in screaming multitudes and fill the air like a snowstorm. Every child in the town seems to be making for home with its finger in a fish's mouth, or in two fishes' mouths, or in three fishes' mouths.
"Grieve not, Eric," she said gently; "I put no faith in this news, for rumour, like the black-backed gull, often changes colour in its flight across the seas. Also I had it but at fifth hand. I am sure of this, at least, that Gudruda will never forsake thee without a cause."
Before it has sunk six inches, if there is not one of those black-backed, orange-bellied, Taylor Brook trout fighting with it, something is wrong with your worm or with you. For the trout are always there, sheltered by the brushwood that makes this half mile of fishing "not worth while." Below the lower road the Taylor Brook becomes uncertain water.
It was his way one of his ways of fighting rival great black-backed gulls. But it was new to the raven, and he had not previously thought out any proper counter to it. Then it was that raven's turn to go mad, and dance a paralytic kan-kan; but he could not get any change out of that gull. Cob hung on almost as well as the trap hung on to him, and far more twistfully.
He had got three mussels; a muddy face; muddier feet; nearly an eye pecked out by a mighty, great black-backed gull; three chivyings from herring-gulls; one nip from a crab who ought to have been dead; two winkles under big stones that took half-an-hour to shift; one dead pigmy shrew length two inches with a hole in its skull, no brains, and a horrible smell; nearly his life removed by the swoop of a kestrel falcon and the javelin-stab of a heron's beak; and twenty minutes' hard cleaning to remove the mud-stains that were not properly off to his nice liking yet.
Most of the birds were fearless enough; only an occasional "saddleback" the greater black-backed gull of the text-books knowing the hand of man to be against it for its raids on game and poultry, would keep at a respectful distance.
170. GREAT BLACK-BACKED GULL. Larus marinus, Linnaeus. French, "Goeland
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