Then he approached it a little nearer, but before it came to the touching point a sudden fear made him start back.
"What is it?
What did you see ?" cried the others.
"I'm not sure there wasn't a twitch of the eyelid," he replied.
"Never mind the eyelid--feel his heart," said one.
"That's all very well," he returned, "but how would you like it yourself?
Will _you_ come and do it ?" "No, no!" they all cried.

"You have undertaken this, and must go through with it." Thus encouraged, he once more turned to the corpse, and again anxiously began to examine the face.

Now Martin had been watching them through the slits of his not quite closed eyes all the time, and listening to their talk.

Being hungry himself he could not help feeling for them, and not thinking that it would hurt him to be cut up in pieces and devoured, he had begun to wish that they would really begin on him.

He was both amused and annoyed at their nervousness, and at last opening wide his eyes very suddenly he cried, "Feel my heart!" It was as if a gun had been fired among them; for a moment they were struck still with terror, and then all together turned and fled, going away with three very long hops, and then opening wide their great wings they launched themselves on the air.
For they were not little black men in black silk clothes as it had seemed, but vultures--those great, high-soaring, black-plumaged birds which he had watched circling in the sky, looking no bigger than bees or flies at that vast distance above the earth.