He sat upon the very topmost perch under the open-work dome of his
spacious and lofty cage. This perch was one of three or four lopped
limbs jutting from a dead tree-trunk erected in the centre of the
cage--a perch far other than that great branch of thunder-blasted pine,
out-thrust from the seaward-facing cliff, whereon he had been wont to
sit in his own land across the ocean.
He sat with his snowy, gleaming, flat-crowned head drawn back between
the dark shoulders of his slightly uplifted wings. His black and
yellow eyes, unwinking, bright and hard like glass, stared out from
under his overhanging brows with a kind of darting and defiant inquiry
quite unlike their customary expression of tameless despair. That dull
world outside the bars of his cage, that hated, gaping, inquisitive
world which he had ever tried to ignore by staring at the sun or gazing
into the deeps of sky overhead, how it had changed since yesterday!
The curious crowds, the gabbling voices were gone. Even the high
buildings of red brick or whitish-grey stone, beyond the iron palings
of the park, were going, toppling down with a slow, dizzy lurch, or
leaping suddenly into the air with a roar and a huge belch of brown and
orange smoke and scarlet flame. Here and there he saw men running
wildly. Here and there he saw other men lying quite still--sprawling,
inert shapes an the close-cropped grass, or the white asphalted walks,
or the tossed pavement of the street. He knew that these inert,
sprawling shapes were men, and that the men were dead; and the sight
filled his exile heart with triumph. Men were his enemies, his
gaolers, his opponents, and now at last--he knew not how--he was
tasting vengeance. The once smooth green turf around his cage was
becoming pitted with strange yellow-brown holes. These holes, he had
noticed, always appeared after a burst of terrific noise, and livid
flame, and coloured smoke, followed by a shower of clods and pebbles,
and hard fragments which sometimes flew right through his cage with a
vicious hum. There was a deadly force in these humming fragments. He
knew it, for his partner in captivity, a golden eagle of the Alps, had
been hit by one of them, and now lay dead on the littered floor below
him, a mere heap of bloody feathers. Certain of the iron bars of the
cage, too, had been struck and cut through, as neatly as his own hooked
beak would sever the paw of a rabbit.
The air was full of tremendous crashing, buffeting sounds and sudden
fierce gusts, which forced him to tighten the iron grip of his talons
upon the perch. In the centre of the little park pond, some fifty feet
from his cage, clustered a panic-stricken knot of eight or ten fancy
ducks and two pairs of red-billed coot, all that remained of the flock
of water-birds which had formerly screamed and gabbled over the pool.
This little cluster was in a state of perpetual ferment, those on the
outside struggling to get into the centre, those on the inside striving
to keep their places. From time to time one or two on the outer ring
would dive under and force their way up in the middle of the press,
where they imagined themselves more secure. But presently they would
find themselves on the outside again, whereupon, in frantic haste, they
would repeat the manoeuvre. The piercing glance of the eagle took in
and dismissed this futile panic with immeasurable scorn. With like
scorn, too, he noted the three gaunt cranes which had been wont to
stalk so arrogantly among the lesser fowl and drive them from their
meals. These once domineering birds were now standing huddled, their
drooped heads close together, beneath a dense laurel thicket just
behind the cage, their long legs quaking at every explosion.
Amid all this destroying tumult and flying death the eagle had no fear.
He was merely excited by it. If a fragment of shell sang past his
head, he never flinched, his level stare never even filmed or wavered.
The roar and crash, indeed, and the monstrous buffetings of tormented
air, seemed to assuage the long ache of his home-sickness. They
reminded him of the hurricane racing past his ancient pine, of the
giant waves shattering themselves with thunderous jar upon the cliff
below. From time to time, as if his nerves were straining with
irresistible exultation, he would lift himself to his full height, half
spread his wings, stretch forward his gleaming white neck, and give
utterance to a short, strident, yelping cry. Then he would settle back
upon his perch again, and resume his fierce contemplation of the ruin
that was falling on the city.
Suddenly an eleven-inch shell dropped straight in the centre of the
pool and exploded on the concrete bottom which underlay the mud. Half
the pool went up in the colossal eruption of blown flame and steam and
smoke. Even here on his perch the eagle found himself spattered and
drenched. When the shrunken surface of the pool had closed again over
the awful vortex, and the smoke had drifted off to join itself to the
dark cloud which hung over the city, the little flock of ducks and coot
was nowhere to be seen. It simply was not. But a bleeding fragment of
flesh, with some purple-and-chestnut feathers clinging to it, lay upon
the bottom of the cage. This morsel caught the eagle's eye. He had
been forgotten for the past two days--the old one-legged keeper of the
cages having vanished--and he was ravenous with hunger. He hopped down
briskly to the floor, grabbed the morsel, and gulped it. Then he
looked around hopefully for more. There were no more such opportune
tit-bits within the cage, but just outside he saw the half of a big
carp, which had been torn in twain by a caprice of the explosion and
tossed up here upon the grass. This was just such a morsel as he was
craving. He thrust one great talon out between the bars and clutched
at the prize. But it was beyond his reach. Disappointed, he tried the
other claw, balancing himself on one leg with widespread wings.
Stretch and struggle as he would, it was all in vain. The fish lay too
far off. Then he tried reaching through the bars with his head. He
elongated his neck till he almost thought he was a heron, and till his
great beak was snapping hungrily within an inch or two of the prize.
But not a hair's-breadth closer could he get. At last, in a cold fury,
he gave it up, and drew back, and shook himself to rearrange the much
dishevelled feathers of his neck.
Just at this moment, while he was still on the floor of the cage, a
high-velocity shell came by. With its flat trajectory it passed just
overhead, swept the dome of the cage clean out of existence, and
whizzed onwards to explode, with a curious grunting crash, some
hundreds of yards beyond. The eagle looked up and gazed for some
seconds before realizing that his prison was no longer a prison. The
path was clear above him to the free spaces of the air. But he was in
no unseemly haste. His eye measured accurately the width of the exit,
and saw that it was awkwardly narrow for his great spread of wing. He
could not essay it directly from the ground, his quarters being too
straitened for free flight. Hopping upwards from limb to limb of the
roosting-tree, he regained the topmost perch, and found that, though
split by a stray splinter of the cage, it was still able to bear his
weight. From this point he sprang straight upwards, with one beat of
his wings. But the wing-tips struck violently against each side of the
opening, and he was thrown back with such force that only by a furious
flopping and struggle could he regain his footing on the perch.
After this unexpected rebuff he sat quiet for perhaps half a minute,
staring fixedly at the exit. He was not going to fail again through
misjudgment. The straight top of the roosting-tree extended for about
three feet above his perch, but this extension being of no use to him,
he had never paid any heed to it hitherto. Now, however, he marked it
with new interest. It was close below the hole in the roof. He
flopped up to it, balanced himself for a second, and once more sprang
for the opening, but this time with a short, convulsive beat of wings
only half spread. The leap carried him almost through, but not far
enough for him to get another stroke of his wings. Clutching out
wildly with stretched talons, he succeeded in catching the end of a
broken bar. Desperately he clung to it, resisting the natural impulse
to help himself by flapping his wings. Reaching out with his beak, he
gripped another bar, and so steadied himself till he could gain a
foothold with both talons. Then slowly, like a dog getting over a
wall, he dragged himself forth, and stood at last free on the outer
side of the bars which had been so long his prison.
But the first thing he thought of was not freedom. It was fish. For
perhaps a dozen seconds he gazed about him majestically, and scanned
with calm the toppling and crashing world. Then spreading his splendid
wings to their fullest extent, with no longer any fear of them striking
against iron bars, he dropped down to the grass beside the cage and
clutched the body of the slain carp. He was no more than just in time,
for a second later a pair of mink, released from their captivity in
perhaps the same way as he had been, came gliding furtively around the
base of the cage, intent upon the same booty. He turned his head over
his shoulder and gave them one look, then fell to tearing and gulping
his meal as unconcernedly as if the two savage little beasts had been
field mice. The mink stopped short, flashed white fangs at him in a
soundless snarl of hate, and whipped about to forage in some more
auspicious direction.
When the eagle had finished his meal--which took him, indeed, scarcely
more time than takes to tell of it--he wiped his great beak
meticulously on the turf. While he was doing so, a shell burst so near
him that he was half smothered in dry earth. Indignantly he shook
himself, hopped a pace or two aside, ruffled up his feathers, and
proceeded to make his toilet as scrupulously as if no shells or sudden
death were within a thousand miles of him.
The toilet completed to his satisfaction, he took a little flapping run
and rose into the air. He flew straight for the highest point within
his view, which chanced to be the slender, soaring spire of a church
somewhere about the centre of the city. As he mounted on a long slant,
he came into the level where most of the shells were travelling, for
their objective was not the little park with its "Zoo," but a line of
fortifications some distance beyond. Above, below, around him streamed
the terrible projectiles, whinnying or whistling, shrieking or roaring,
each according to its calibre and its type. It seemed a miracle that
he should come through that zone unscathed; but his vision was so
powerful and all-embracing, his judgment of speed and distance so
instantaneous and unerring, that he was able to avoid, without apparent
effort, all but the smallest and least visible shells, and these
latter, by the favour of Fate, did not come his way. He was more
annoyed, indeed, by certain volleys of debris which occasionally
spouted up at him with a disagreeable noise, and by the evil-smelling
smoke clouds, which came volleying about him without any reason that he
could discern. He flapped up to a higher level to escape these
annoyances, and so found himself above the track of the shells. Then
he made for the church spire, and perched himself upon the tip of the
great weather-vane. It was exactly what he wanted--a lofty observation
post from which to view the country round about before deciding in
which direction he would journey.
From this high post he noticed that, while he was well above one zone
of shells, there was still another zone of them screaming far overhead.
These projectiles of the upper strata of air were travelling in the
opposite direction. He marked that they came from a crowded line of
smoke-bursts and blinding flashes just beyond the boundary of the city.
He decided that, upon resuming his journey, he would fly at the present
level, and so avoid traversing again either of the zones of death.
Much to his disappointment, he found that his present observation post
did not give him as wide a view as he had hoped for. The city of his
captivity, he now saw, was set upon the loop of a silver stream in the
centre of a saucer-like valley. In every direction his view was
limited by low, encircling hills. Along one sector of this
circuit--that from which the shells of the lower stratum seemed to him
to be issuing--the hill-rim and the slopes below it were fringed with
vomiting smoke-clouds and biting spurts of fire. This did not,
however, influence in the least his choice of the direction in which to
journey. Instinct, little by little, as he sat there on the slowly
veering vane, was deciding that point for him. His gaze was fixing
itself more and more towards the north, or, rather, the north-west; for
something seemed to whisper in his heart that there was where he would
find the wild solitudes which he longed for. The rugged and
mist-wreathed peaks of Scotland or North Wales, though he knew them
not, were calling to him in his new-found freedom.
The call, however, was not yet strong enough to be determining, so,
having well fed and being beyond measure content with his liberty, he
lingered on his skyey perch and watched the crash of the opposing
bombardments. The quarter of the town immediately beneath him had so
far suffered little from the shells, and the church showed no signs of
damage except for one gaping hole in the roof. But along the line of
the fortifications there seemed to be but one gigantic boiling of smoke
and flames, with continual spouting fountains of debris. This
inexplicable turmoil held his interest for a few moments. Then, while
he was wondering what it all meant, an eleven-inch shell struck the
church spire squarely about thirty feet below him.
The explosion almost stunned him. The tip of the spire--with the
weather-cock, and the eagle still clinging to it--went rocketing
straight up into the air amid a stifling cloud of black smoke, while
the rest of the structure, down to a dozen feet below the point of
impact, was blown to the four winds. Half stunned though he was, the
amazed bird kept his wits about him, and clutched firmly to his flying
perch till it reached the end of its flight and turned to fall. Then
he spread his wings wide and let go. The erratic mass of wood and
metal dropped away, and left him floating, half-blinded, in the heart
of the smoke-cloud. A couple of violent wing-beats, however, carried
him clear of the cloud; and at once he shaped his course upwards, as
steeply as he could mount, smitten with a sudden desire for the calm
and the solitude which were associated in his memory with the uppermost
deeps of air.
[Illustration: "Then he spread his wings wide and let go."]
The fire from the city batteries had just now slackened for a little,
and the great bird's progress carried him through the higher shell zone
without mishap. In a minute or two he was far above those strange
flocks which flew so straight and swift, and made such incomprehensible
noises in their flight. Presently, too, he was above the smoke, the
very last wisps of it having thinned off into the clear, dry air. He
now began to find that he had come once more into his own peculiar
realm, the realm of the upper sky, so high that, as he thought, no
other living creature could approach him. He arrested his ascent, and
began to circle slowly on still wings, surveying the earth.
But now he received, for the first time, a shock. Hitherto the most
astounding happenings had failed to startle him, but now a pang of
something very like fear shot through his stout heart. A little to
southward of the city he saw a vast pale-yellow elongated form rising
swiftly, without any visible effort, straight into the sky. Had he
ever seen a sausage, he would have thought that this yellow monster was
shaped like one. Certain fine cords descended from it, reaching all
the way to the earth, and below its middle hung a basket, with a man in
it. It rose to a height some hundreds of feet beyond the level on
which the eagle had been feeling himself supreme. Then it came to
rest, and hung there, swaying slowly in the mild wind.
His apprehension speedily giving way to injured pride, the eagle flew
upwards, in short, steep spirals, as fast as his wings could drive him.
Not till he could once more look down upon the fat back of the
glistening yellow monster did he regain his mood of unruffled calm.
But he regained it only to have it stripped from him, a minute later,
with tenfold lack of ceremony. For far above him--so high that even
his undaunted wings would never venture thither--he heard a fierce and
terrible humming sound. He saw something like a colossal bird--or
rather, it was more suggestive of a dragonfly than a bird--speeding
towards him with never a single beat of its vast, pale wings. Its
speed was appalling. The eagle was afraid, but not with any foolish
panic. He knew that even as a sparrow would be to him, so would he be
to this unheard-of sovereign of the skies. Therefore it was possible
the sovereign of the skies would ignore him and seek a more worthy
opponent. Yes, it was heading towards the giant sausage. And the
sausage, plainly, had no stomach for the encounter. It seemed to
shrink suddenly; and with sickening lurches it began to descend, as if
strong hands were tugging upon the cords which anchored it to earth.
The eagle winged off modestly to one side, but not far enough to miss
anything of the stupendous encounter which he felt was coming. Here,
at last, were events of a strangeness and a terror to move even his
cool spirit out of its indifference.
Now the giant insect was near enough for the eagle to mark that it had
eyes on the under-sides of its wings--immense, round, coloured eyes of
red and white and blue. Its shattering hum shook the eagle's nerves,
steady and seasoned though they were. Slanting slightly downwards, it
darted straight toward the sausage, which was now wallowing fatly in
its convulsive efforts to descend. At the same time the eagle caught
sight of another of the giant birds, or insects, somewhat different in
shape and colour from the first, darting up from the opposite
direction. Was it, too, he wondered, coming to attack the terrified
sausage, or to defend it?
Before he could find an answer to this exciting question, the first
monster had arrived directly above the sausage and was circling over it
at some height, glaring down upon it with those great staring eyes of
its wings. Something struck the sausage fairly in the back.
Instantly, with a tremendous windy roar, the sausage vanished in a
sheet of flame. The monster far above it rocked and plunged in the
uprush of tormented air, the waves of which reached even to where the
eagle hung poised, and forced him to flap violently in order to keep
his balance against them.
A few moments later the second monster arrived. The eagle saw at once
that the two were enemies. The first dived headlong at the second,
spitting fire, with a loud and dreadful rap-rap-rapping noise, from its
strange blunt muzzle. The two circled around each other, and over and
under each other, at a speed which made even the eagle dizzy with
amazement; and he saw that it was something more deadly than fire which
spurted from their blunt snouts; for every now and then small things,
which travelled too fast for him to see, twanged past him with a
vicious note which he knew for the voice of death. He edged discreetly
farther away. Evidently this battle of the giants was dangerous to
spectators. His curiosity was beginning to get sated. He was on the
point of leaving the danger area altogether, when the dreadful duel
came suddenly to an end. He saw the second monster plunge drunkenly,
in wild, ungoverned lurches, and then drop head first, down, down,
down, straight as a stone, till it crashed into the earth and instantly
burst into flame. He saw the great still eyes of the victor staring
down inscrutably upon the wreck of its foe. Then he saw it whirl
sharply--tilting its rigid wings at so steep an angle that it almost
seemed about to overturn--and dart away again in the direction from
which it had come. He saw the reason for this swift departure. A
flock of six more monsters, of the breed of the one just slain, came
sweeping up from the south to take vengeance for their comrade's defeat.
The eagle had no mind to await them. He had had enough of wonders, and
the call in his heart had suddenly grown clear and intelligible.
Mounting still upward till he felt the air growing thin beneath his
wing-beats, he headed northwards as fast as he could fly. He had no
more interest now in the amazing panorama which unrolled beneath him,
in the thundering and screaming flights of shell which sped past in the
lower strata of the air. He was intent only upon gaining the wild
solitudes of which he dreamed. He marked others of the monsters which
he so dreaded, journeying sometimes alone, sometimes in flocks, but
always with the same implacable directness of flight, always with that
angry and menacing hum which, of all the sounds he had ever heard,
alone had power to shake his bold heart. He noticed that sometimes the
sky all about these monsters would be filled with sudden bursts of
fleecy cloud, looking soft as wool; and once he saw one of these
apparently harmless clouds burst full on the nose of one of the
monsters, which instantly flew apart and went hurtling down to earth in
revolving fragments. But he was no longer curious. He gave them all
as wide a berth as possible, and sped on, without delaying to note
their triumphs or their defeats.
At last the earth grew green again below him. The monsters, the smoke,
the shells, the flames, the thunders, were gradually left behind, and
far ahead at last he saw the sea, flashing gold and sapphire beneath
the summer sun. Soon--for he flew swiftly--it was almost beneath him.
His heart exulted at the sight. Then across that stretch of gleaming
tide he saw a dim line of cliffs--white cliffs, such cliffs as he
desired.
But at this point, when he was so near his goal, that Fate which had
always loved to juggle with him decided to show him a new one of her
tricks. Two more monsters appeared, diving steeply from the blue above
him. One was pursuing the other. Quite near him the pursuer overtook
its quarry, and the two spat fire at each other with that strident
rap-rap-rapping sound which he so disliked. He swerved as wide as
possible from the path of their terrible combat, and paid no heed to
its outcome. But, as he fled, something struck him near the tip of his
left wing.
The shock went through him like a needle of ice or fire, and he
dropped, leaving a little cloud of feathers in the air above to settle
slowly after him. He turned once completely over as he fell. But
presently; with terrific effort, he succeeded in regaining a partial
balance. He could no longer fully support himself, still less continue
his direct flight; but he managed to keep on an even keel and to delay
his fall. He knew that to drop into the sea below him was certain
death. But he had marked that the sea was dotted with peculiar-looking
ships--long, narrow, dark ships--which travelled furiously, vomiting
black smoke and carrying a white mass of foam in their teeth,
Supporting himself, with the last ounce of his strength, till one of
these rushing ships was just about to pass below him, he let himself
drop, and landed sprawling on the deck.
Half stunned though he was, he recovered himself almost instantly,
clawed up to his feet, steadied himself with one outstretched wing
against the pitching of the deck, and defied, with hard, undaunted eye
and threatening beak, a tall figure in blue, white-capped and
gold-braided, which stood smiling down upon him.
* * * * *
"By Jove," exclaimed Sub-Lieutenant James Smith, "here's luck: Uncle
Sam's own chicken, which he's sent us as a mascot till his ships can
get over and take a hand in the game with us: Delighted to see you, old
bird: You've come to the right spot, you have, and we'll do the best we
can to make you comfortable."