He sniffed at the fresh, sweet meat, and hunger all at once possessed him.
Where the wolf had stripped open a tender flank he began to eat, and as he ate he growled, so that warning of his possessorship reached the spruce top.
In answer to it came a stir of wings, and the male owl launched himself out into the moon glow.

The female followed.

For a few moments they floated like gray ghosts over Peter, silent as the night shadows.

Then, with the suddenness and speed of a bolt from a catapult, the giant male shot out of a silvery mist of gloom and struck Peter.

The two rolled over the carcass of the fawn, and for a space Peter was dazed by the thundering beat of powerful wings, and the hammering of the owl's beak at the back of his neck.