Survival

That wind, Fay Donolly was thinking as she woke, it was like a spiteful bird, swooping down and lifting away. She saw it as a brown sea-eagle, poised somewhere in the void above the house, watching with baleful eyes for a chance to strike in earnest. Now it was still as death, now it made a show of dropping for the kill. And the screech of its wings, as it swept down, stopped the heart for a moment, so that it started again with a flutter.

Opening paragraph of Vance Palmer, Cyclone, A & R, Sydney, 1947