The aim was true to a hair-breadth. Tom was struck
right in the centre of his forehead, between the eyes. I thought his
skull was cracked. Perhaps it was. The sudden astonishment of that
outraged cat, the virtuous indignation and wrath, terror, and pain,
are far beyond description. His eyes and screams and desperate retreat
told all that. When the blow was received, he made a noise that I
never heard a cat make before or since; an awfully deep, condensed,
screechy, explosive _Wuck!_ as he bounced straight up in the air like
a bucking bronco; and when he alighted after his spring, he rushed
madly across the room and made frantic efforts to climb up the
hard-finished plaster wall. Not satisfied to get the width of the
kitchen away from his mysterious enemy, for the first time that cold
winter he tried to get out of the house, anyhow, anywhere out of that
loon-infested room. When he finally ventured to look back and saw that
the barbarous bird was still there, tranquil and motionless in front
of the stove, he regained command of some of his shattered senses and
carefully commenced to examine his wound.
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