dozen of acres in extent, with a needle-like pinnacle of splintered
granite at its eastern or seaward end. The broad southeastern face of
the summit was of naked granite, whitened by the storm and frost of
ages, whence the name of Old Bald Face. But between this bleak,
wind-harried front and the rich plain country by the sea were many
lesser pinnacles and ridges, with deep ravines between, all clothed with
dark spruce woods and tangled undergrowth. Around to full south and west
and north lay an infertile region, thin-soiled and rocky, producing
little timber but hemlock and stunted paper birch, and therefore not
worth the attention of either the lumberman or the squatter. The whole
of this district was interlaced with watercourses and sown with lakes
having their ultimate outlet in the tidal estuary which washed the
wharves of the town.
If the land in this region skirting Old Bald Face was barren, its waters
were not. They swarmed with fish--lake-trout, white fish, and huge
suckers, as well as the ordinary brook-trout. They supplied
hunting-ground, therefore, for not only a number of fish-hawks, but also
for no less than three pairs of the fish-hawks' dreaded tyrants, the
white-headed eagles. These three pairs of eagles had their nests in the
uppermost and most inaccessible ledges of Bald Face; and the wild
country below was divided among them into six ranges, each great bird
having his or her own hunting ground, upon which not even their own
mates could poach with impunity.
The nests of the three royal pairs were all within a distance of perhaps
half a mile of each other, but each was austerely secluded and jealously
hidden from its neighbors. Each pair regarded its neighbors with a
coldly tolerant aversion, and kept an aloof but vigilant watch upon them
as possible poachers.
When the first eagle, smitten with fear by the vision of the swiftly
mounting aeroplane, fled back to his eyrie to warn his fierce-eyed mate
of this portentous monster of the air, his perturbation was detected by
the female of the next pair, who chanced to be homing at that moment
with a fish for her hungry nestlings. Fear seems to travel by some
uncomprehended but very efficient wireless, and fear in the lords of the
air was a thing too unusual to be ignored. Hastily depositing her
burden, the newcomer flapped upward and around to the east, till she,
too, caught sight of the mounting monoplane. It was far off, indeed, but
already so high above earth that to her eyes it stood out dark and
sinister against the pale expanse of sea beyond the town. She flapped
over for a nearer view, flew close enough to hear the mysterious roar of
the motor and to detect the man-creature riding the monster's neck, and
fled back to her nestlings with rage and terror at her heart. No longer
could she feel secure on the dizziest and remotest ledges of the peaks,
no longer were even the soundless deeps of sky inaccessible to man!
Within an hour every eagle of Bald Face knew of this dreadful invasion
of their hitherto impregnable domain. It was the time of year when
their nestlings were most helpless, and that is the time of year when
the white-headed eagles will face all odds with an incomparable ferocity
of valor at the hint of menace to their skyey homes.
* * * * *
The airman at the town of X---- was one Rob MacCreedy, who had recently
been making a name for himself at the aviation grounds some hundred
miles down the coast. He had come up to X---- primarily to turn a needed
penny by exhibition flights and passenger-carrying over the spacious and
level fields behind the town. But his secondary object was to experiment
with the dangerous eddies and wind-holes that were likely to be met with
above the profound ravines of Bald Face and its buttressing hills. His
purpose was to go to Europe and win fame by some sensational flights
over the Alps or the Pyrenees; and having a very practical Canadian
ambition to survive for the enjoyment of the fame he planned to win, he
was determined to prepare himself effectively for the perils that would
confront him.
But MacCreedy had another object in view, which he did not talk about
lest matter-of-fact folk should call him childish. He wanted to see what
there was on top of Old Bald Face. That gaunt gray summit was regarded
as practically unscalable. It had indeed been scaled, men said, some
thirty or forty years ago, after desperate effort and altogether
hair-raising adventure, by a greatly daring trapper, who had barely
survived to tell of his exploit. Since then, the men of X---- not being
wholehearted or skilled mountain-climbers, all such attempts had ended
in failure. Among the legends which had gathered about the austere
summit, there was none to suggest that gold might be found thereon, else
the cloudy sanctuary had doubtless been violated without unnecessary
delay. But the traditions handed down from the adventure of that old
trapper were as stimulating to MacCreedy's imagination as any myth of
quartz vein or nugget could have been. They told of a remarkable level
plateau, like a table for the gods, with a little lake of black crystal
set in the center of it, ice cold and of unfathomable depth. It was, in
effect, according to tradition, bottomless.
To MacCreedy's eager and boyish imagination this lofty plateau and this
mysterious uninvestigated lake were irresistible. He was determined to
know more about them both; and as the top of Bald Face, for all its
inaccessibility, was less than five thousand feet above sea-level, his
monoplane seemed to offer him an easy way to it.
The third day after MacCreedy's arrival at X---- was windless and
without a cloud in the blue. The air almost sparkled with its clarity,
and there was an unspringlike tang in it which made MacCreedy's nerves
tingle for adventure. After he had given the crowd their money's worth
in swift mountings and breath-taking _vols-planes_, he started off, at a
height of some two thousand feet, toward the mountain, standing pallid
and grim against the intense blue. He mounted swiftly as he went, and
the spectators stared after him doubtfully, till they grasped his
purpose.
"He's going to visit the top of Old Bald Face!" went the murmur round
the crowded edges of the field. And a feeling that he might bring back
some interesting information made them content to wait, without
grumbling, for his return.
Since their first sight of the giant-winged monster soaring and humming
over X----, the eagles of Bald Face had not dared to venture far from
home in their foragings. Their nerves were raw with angry anxiety for
their nests. MacCreedy, as he came within a mile or two of the mountain,
took note of an eagle not far ahead, circling at a higher level than
himself.
"The old bird thinks he can fly some," mused MacCreedy, "but I bet I'm
going to give him the surprise of his life!"
A few moments more, and he was himself surprised, as the solitary
sentinel was joined by another, and another, and another, till presently
there were six of the great birds flapping and whirling between him and
Bald Face, about at the level of the edge of the plateau.
"Seem to be as interested in aeroplanes as any of us humans," thought
MacCreedy, and gave his planes a lift that should carry him over the
plateau at a height of not much over a hundred feet. He would make a
hasty observation first, then circle around and effect a landing, if
the surface looked smooth enough for him to attempt it without too much
risk. He was surprised somewhat by the attitude of the eagles, who were
now circling nearer, and seemed to be more angry than curious or
terrified at his approach. Then his attention was abruptly withdrawn
from their threatening evolutions. It was all required, and that
urgently, by the aeroplane.
Having arrived over the deeply cleft and ridged outworks of Bald Face,
the aeroplane had plunged into a viewless turmoil of air-currents and
vortices. It dropped with startling suddenness into a "pocket," and fell
as if a vacuum had opened beneath it. MacCreedy saw a vicious granite
ridge, whiskered with fir trees, lurch up at him insanely from a
thousand feet below. He was almost upon it before his planes bit upon
solid air again and glided off from the peril, slanting upward rockingly
over a gaping abyss. Yelping with triumph, the eagles had swooped down
after him; but he could not hear their cries, of course, through the
roar of the Gnome; and of eagles, at that moment, he was thinking not at
all.
Realizing the imminence of his danger from these vortices, MacCreedy
changed his course and swept back again as fast as he could toward the
open, his machine careering wickedly in the eddies and upthrusts of air.
He decided that he must get far above this area of disturbance, and then
spiral down directly over the plateau, where, as he calculated, the
currents would be less tumultuous.
The eagles, imagining that the loud monster had been put to flight by
their threats, came following in its wake, determined to see it safely
off their premises and give it no time to recover from what they
conceived to be its panic. But they were far too sagacious to attack and
force a more than doubtful conflict. They were filled with awe of this
gigantic being which flew with rigid wings and such appalling roar, yet
allowed itself to be ridden by the man between its shoulders. They were
perplexed, too, by the fierce wind which streamed out behind its level
wings. Their amazement was heightened by the fact that their own long
and powerful wings, which were able to overtake so easily the flight of
the agile fish-hawk, were forced to beat furiously in order to keep up
with this incomprehensible stranger, who was apparently making no effort
at all.
A swift motor-car, which had followed MacCreedy's flight at top speed
across the plain, had halted at the point where the highway passed
nearest to the broken and impassable region surrounding the mountain.
Its occupants, watching MacCreedy's movements through their
field-glasses, and noting the great birds crowding behind him, thought
at first that the eagles had put him to flight and forced him to give up
his venture. They were undeceived, however. Then they saw him turn--at
such a height that, even to their powerful glasses, the pursuing eagles
were no more than specks--and soar back till he was directly over the
summit.
At the height which he had now gained the air was icy cold, but still as
a dream. The world below looked like a vast, shallow bowl, the sides
concaving upwards around him to the horizon. Two-thirds of this horizon
rim were of dark green woods, threaded with the gleaming silver of
water-courses. The remaining third was of sea, which looked as if it
overhung the town of X----, and were withheld only by a miracle from
flowing in and filling the bowl. Directly beneath him, two to three
thousand feet down, the mighty summit of Old Bald Face looked
insignificant. It lay outspread quite flat and shelterless in the sun,
its secrets clean revealed, and there, sure enough, at its center, was
the pool of tradition, gleaming upward, glassy still. At the same time
he saw, though without much interest, the eagles. They were very far
below him now, hardly above the level of the plateau, flying in
occasionally over its edges, but for the most part circling out above
the surrounding gulfs. In a casual way MacCreedy inferred that they must
have nests in the ledges of the precipices.
In a somewhat narrow spiral he now began his descent, gradually and
under power, that he might be in full readiness to grapple with the
treacherous gusts which came leaping up at him from under the brink of
the plateau. He was surprised to see that, as he descended, the eagles
rose hurriedly to meet him; but at first he paid no attention to them,
being intent upon the search for a good landing-place, and upon the
mystery of that sky-inhabiting pool. A minute or two more, however, and
it was no longer possible for him to ignore the approaching birds, who
were rising at him with unmistakable manifestations of rage. For the
first time it occurred to him that they might be thinking he had come to
rob their nests. "Plucky beggars!" he said to himself admiringly, "to
think of showing fight to a grown-up aeroplane!"
The next moment, as he noted the spread of those flapping wings, the
shining, snowy, outstretched heads and necks, the firm and formidable
half-opened beaks, a sweat of apprehension broke out all over him. What
if one of the misguided birds should foul his propeller or come
blundering aboard and snap a stay or a control wire? The idea of being
dashed to pieces in that skyey solitude was somehow more daunting to his
spirit than the prospect which he faced indifferently every day--that of
being hurled down upon familiar earth.
For a few seconds MacCreedy was tempted to drive his planes heavenward
again and withdraw from the situation, to return another day with a
passenger and a shot-gun for his defense. Then he grew angry and
obstinate. He had come to explore the summit of Bald Face, and he was
not going to be balked by a flock of birds. He was low enough now to
satisfy himself that the plateau afforded a good landing, so he dipped
his descent to a steeper angle, making haste to get through the
suspense.
Immediately the eagles were all about him. To his relief, they seemed
afraid to fly directly in front of him, as if apprehending that this
monstrous bird of his might carry some terrible weapon in its
blunt-faced beak. Mounting swiftly, they passed the descending aeroplane
on either side, and then gathered in above it, swooping and yelping.
Through the roar of his motor MacCreedy caught the strident shrillness
of their cries. He felt that at any moment one might pluck up courage to
pounce upon the plane or upon his head. He wondered if his leather cap
would be stout enough to resist the clutch of those edged talons which
he saw opening and shutting viciously above him. He wished himself
safely landed.
He was low enough now to choose his landing-place. He was just about to
shut off the engine for the final glide, when one of the female eagles,
growing desperate, swooped and struck the right wing of the plane not
far from its tip. The extended talons went right through the cloth,
tearing a long gash, and, before the bird could recover herself, she was
caught by one of the strong wires that braced the wing. The aeroplane
rocked under her struggles, but in the next moment she was thrown clear,
so badly crumpled that she fell topsy-turvy through the air for some
little distance before she could pull her wits together and right
herself. Then, dishevelled and cowed, she flew off to one side, with no
more stomach left for another assault.
MacCreedy had brought his plane to a level keel, the better to withstand
the attack. Now he laughed grimly and resumed his descent. Almost in the
same instant he realized that an immense eagle was swooping straight at
his head. He ducked--the only way to save his face. The grasping claws
sunk deep into his shoulders. With a yell he straightened himself
backward violently. His assailant, unable for a moment to free his
claws from the tough tweed of the jacket, and swept backward by the rush
of the plane, plunged down among the supporting stays, where he
struggled and flapped wildly to extricate himself.
Smarting with pain and wrath, and with his heart in his mouth lest the
stays should snap and the planes collapse, MacCreedy cut off the power
and slid sharply downward. The eagle behind him got free, and flapped
off, much daunted by the encounter. The remaining four birds hung
immediately over the swiftly dropping plane, but hesitated to attack
after the rough experience of their fellows.
MacCreedy touched ground at somewhat higher speed than he had calculated
upon, and found the level stone, swept by the storm of ages, so smooth
that his wheels ran along it much too easily. Thus he found himself
confronted by a new peril. Could he check himself before reaching the
brink? He steered a long curve around the edge of the shining pool,
gathered his legs under him so that he might jump clear, if necessary,
and came to a stop with his vacillating propeller almost peering over
the abyss. Just before him was a drop of a cool thousand feet. He
sprang out, hauled the machine back a dozen yards or so, and drew the
longest breath of relief that had been forced from his lungs since his
first ventures in aeroplaning.
Then he snatched the heaviest wrench from his tool kit and turned in a
rage to settle accounts with his tormentors. But the eagles were now in
a less militant frame of mind. Two of their number had had more than
enough, and were already flapping back dejectedly toward their nests.
The others seemed to realize that the monster, now that its rider had
dismounted, was merely another of the man-creature's tools, such as a
boat or a canoe, inanimate and harmless except when its dreaded master
chose to animate it. Moreover, now that MacCreedy was out of the
machine, erect upon his feet, glaring up at them with masterful eyes,
and shouting at them in those human tones which all the wild kindreds
find so disconcerting, they were much more afraid of him than before.
Their anger began to die away into a mere nervous dread and aversion. It
seemed to occur to them that perhaps, after all, the man did not want
their nests. He was nowhere near them. They yelped indignantly at him,
and flew off to perch on their eyries and brood over the problem.
MacCreedy watched them go, and dropped his weapon back into the kit.
Then he went over his precious machine minutely, to assure himself that
it had sustained no damage except that slit in one wing, which was not
enough to give serious trouble. Then, with a rush of exultation, he ran
over to examine the mysterious pool. He found it beautiful enough, in
its crystal-clear austerity; but, alas, its utter clearness was all that
was needed to shatter its chief mystery. It was deep, indeed, but it was
certainly not bottomless, for he could discern its bottom, from one
shore or the other, in every part. He contented himself, however, with
the thought that there was mystery enough for the most exacting in the
mere existence of this deep and brimming tarn on the crest of a granite
peak. As far as he could judge from his reading, which was extensive,
this smooth flat granite top of Bald Face, with its little pinnacle at
one end and its deep transparent tarn in the center, was unlike any
other known summit in the world. He was contented with his explorations,
and ready now to return and tell about them.
But if content with his explorations, he was far from content on the
score of his adventure with the eagles. He felt that it had been rather
more of a close call than it appeared; and there was nothing he desired
less than an immediate repetition of it. What he dreaded was that the
starting of the motor might revive the fears of the great birds in
regard to their nests, and bring them once more swooping upon him. He
traversed the circuit of the plateau, peering downward anxiously, and at
last managed roughly to locate the three nests. They were all on the
south and southeast faces of the summit. He decided that he would get
off as directly and swiftly as possible, and by way of the northwest
front; and by this self-effacing attitude he trusted to convince the
touchy birds that he had no wish to trespass upon their domesticity.
He allowed himself all too brief a run, and the plane got into the air
but a few feet before reaching the brink. So narrow a margin was it,
indeed, that he caught his breath with a gasp before she lifted. It
looked as if he were going to dive into space. But he rose instead, and
as he sailed out triumphantly across the abyss, the eagles came flapping
up over the rim of the plateau behind. They saw that he was departing,
so they sank again to their eyries, and congratulated themselves on
having driven him away. A few minutes later, at an unprovocative height,
he swept around and headed for home. As he came into view once more to
the anxious watchers in the automobile, who had been worried over his
long disappearance, the car turned and raced back over the plain to
X----, ambitious to arrive before him and herald his triumph. But the
fact that that triumph was not altogether an unqualified one remained a
secret between MacCreedy and the eagles.
The Cabin Door
What was known as the County Line Road, though in winter a highway of
some importance for the sleds and sleighs of the lumbermen, was in
summer little more than a broad, straight trail, with grass and wild
flowers growing undisturbed between the ruts. Just now, in the late and
sodden northern spring, it was a disheartening stretch of hummocks and
bog-holes, the bog-holes emphasized by a leg-breaking array of half
rotten poles laid crossways. It was beautiful, however, in its lonesome,
pallid, wistful fashion, for its hummocks, where dry enough, were
already bluing tenderly with the first violets, its fringes were
sparsely adorned with the shy blooms of wind-flower, dog-tooth, and
hepatica, and scattered through the dark ranks of the fir trees on
either side were little colonies of white birch or silver poplar, just
filming with the first ineffable green.
To the slim girl who, bundle in hand and with skirts tucked up half-way
to the knee, was picking her steps along this exasperating path, the
wildness of the scene--its mingled harshness and delicacy--brought a
pang which she could but dimly understand. The pale purpling of the
violets, the aerial greening of the birch tops against the misty sky,
the solemnity of the dark, massed fir trees--it was all beautiful in her
eyes beyond anything words could suggest, but it made her heart ache
with something like an intolerable homesickness. This was
incomprehensible to her, since she was already, in a sense, at home.
This was her native wilderness, this was the kind of chill, ethereal,
lonesome spring which thrilled through the memories of her childhood.
And she was nearing--she could not now be more than twelve miles
from--the actual home of her childhood, that gray cabin on the outskirts
of the remote and wind-swept settlement of Stony Brook.
For the past three years--going on for four now, indeed--Sissy Bembridge
had been away from this wild home, working hard, and saving her wages,
in the big shoe factory at K----, down by the sea. Called home suddenly
by word that her mother was ill, she had come by train to the end of the
branch, and tried to get a rig to take her around by the main road to
Stony Brook. There was no rig to be had for love or money. Too anxious
to wait, and confident in her young vigor, she had left her luggage,
tied up a few necessaries and eatables in a handy bundle, and set out by
the short cut of the old Line Road. Deaf to all dissuasions, she had
counted on making Stony Brook before nightfall. Moreover--though she
would never have acknowledged to herself that such a consideration could
count for anything when all her thoughts were on her mother's
illness--she was aware of the fact that Connor's gang was stream-driving
on the Ottanoonsis, and would be by now just about the point where the
Line Road touches the river. Mike Farrell would be on the drive, and if
she should chance to pass the time o' day with him, and let him know she
was at home--why, there'd be no harm done to anybody.