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 on 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 manœuvre. 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 bufferings 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 _débris_ 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 _débris_. 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.
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 dragon-fly 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 undersides 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.”