Then
the old bird felt life was over: he had lost all that made it
beautiful. He flew to fight his younger rival, but his attack was
weak and wavering. The young one rushed at him violently and
passionately, tore his body, and croaked menacingly. The female
watched the fray with indifference, as she had done many years
before.
The old bird was beaten.
Fluttered, blood-stained, with one eye swollen, he flew back to his
nest and painfully perched himself on the end of a root. Something
within him told him his life was at an end. He had lived in order to
eat and to breed. Now he had only to die. Instinct told him that. For
two days he sat perched above the steep, quiet, immovable, his head
sunk deep into his shoulders.
Then, calmly, unperceivingly, he died. He fell down from the steep
and lay with his legs crooked and turned upward.
This was during the night. The stars were brilliant. Birds were
crying in the woods and over the river. Somewhere owls hooted.
The male-bird lay at the bottom of the ravine for five days. His body
was already decaying, and emitted a bitter, offensive odour.
A wolf came and devoured it.
ALWAYS ON DETACHMENT
Alexander Alexandrovitch Agrenev, engineer, spent all day in the
quarry, laying and exploding dynamite. In the village below was a
factory, its chimneys belching smoke; and creaking wagonettes sped
backwards and forwards from the parapet.
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