THE NEST OF THE FISHING EAGLE.
Benjamin continued to attend the school, but it was evident that he did so
with an injured heart, and chiefly out of love for the old chief, his
father. He had a high regard for his teacher, whose kindness was
unfailing, and he showed a certain partiality for Gretchen; but he was as
a rule silent, and there were dark lines on his forehead that showed that
he was unhappy. He would not be treated as an inferior, and he seemed to
feel that he was so regarded by the scholars.
He began to show a peculiar kind of contempt for all of the pupils except
Gretchen. He pretended not to see them, hear them, or to be aware of their
presence or existence. He would pass through a group of boys as though the
place was vacant, not so much as moving his eye from the direct path. He
came and went, solitary and self-contained, proud, cold, and revengeful.
But this indifference was caused by sensitiveness and the feeling that he
had been slighted. The dark lines relaxed, and his face wore a kindly glow
whenever his teacher went to his desk--if the split-log bench for a
book-rest might be so called. "I would give my life for Gretchen and you,"
he said one day to Mr. Mann; and added: "I would save them all for you."
There was a cluster of gigantic trees close by the school-house, nearly
two hundred feet high. The trees, which were fir, had only dry stumps of
limbs for a distance of nearly one hundred feet from the ground. At the
top, or near the top, the green leaves or needles and dead boughs had
matted together and formed a kind of shelf or eyrie, and on this a pair of
fishing eagles had made their nest.
The nest had been there many years, and the eagles had come back to it
during the breeding season and reared their young.
For a time after the opening of the school none of the pupils seemed to
give any special attention to this high nest. It was a cheerful sight at
noon to see the eagles wheel in the air, or the male eagle come from the
glimmering hills and alight beside his mate.
One afternoon a sudden shadow like a falling cloud passed by the half-open
shutter of the log school-house and caused the pupils to start. There was
a sharp cry of distress in the air, and the master looked out and said:
"Attend to your books, children; it is only the eagle."
But again and again the same swift shadow, like the fragment of a
storm-cloud, passed across the light, and the wild scream of the bird
caused the scholars to watch and to listen. The cry was that of agony and
affright, and it was so recognized by Benjamin, whose ear and eye were
open to Nature, and who understood the voices and cries of the wild and
winged inhabitants of the trees and air.
He raised his hand.
"May I go see?"
The master bowed silently. The boy glided out of the door, and was heard
to exclaim:
"Look! look! the nest--the nest!"
The master granted the school a recess, and all in a few moments were
standing without the door peering into the tall trees.
The long dry weather and withering sun had caused the dead boughs to
shrink and to break beneath the great weight of the nest that rested upon
them. The eagle's nest was in ruins. It had fallen upon the lower boughs,
and two young half-fledged eaglets were to be seen hanging helplessly on a
few sticks in mid-air and in danger of falling to the ground.
It was a bright afternoon. The distress of the two birds was pathetic, and
their cries called about them other birds, as if in sympathy.
The eagles seldom descended to any point near the plain in their flight,
but mounted, as it were, to the sun, or floated high in the air; but in
their distress this afternoon they darted downward almost to the ground,
as though appealing for help for their young.
While the school was watching this curious scene the old chief of the
Umatillas came up the cool highway or trail, to go home with Benjamin
after school.
The eagles seemed to know him. As he joined the pitying group, the female
eagle descended as in a spasm of grief, and her wing swept his plume. She
uttered a long, tremulous cry as she passed and ascended to her young.
"She call," said the old chief. "She call me."
"I go," said Benjamin, with a look at his father.
"Yes, go--she call. She call--the God overhead he call. Go!"
A slender young pine ran up beside one of the giant trees, tall and green.
In a moment Benjamin was seen ascending this pine to a point where he
could throw himself upon the smallest of the great trees and grasp the
ladder of the lower dead branches. Up and up he went in the view of all,
until he had reached a height of some hundred and fifty feet.
The eagles wheeled around him, describing higher circles as he ascended.
He reached the young eagles at last, but passed by them. What was he going
to do?
There was a shelf of green boughs above him, which would bear the weight
of a nest. He went up to them at a distance of nearly two hundred feet. He
then began to gather up the fallen sticks of the old nest, and to break
off new sticks and to construct a new nest. The old chief watched him with
pride, and, turning to the master, said:
"Ah-a--that is my boy. He be me. I was he once--it is gone now--what I
was."
When Benjamin had made a nest he descended, and at the peril of his own
life, on the decayed limbs, he rescued the two young eagles that were
hanging with heads downward and open beaks. He carried them up to the new
nest and placed them in it, and began to descend.
But a withered bough that he grasped was too slender for his weight, and
broke. He grasped another, but that too gave way. He tried to drop into
the top of the tall young pine below him, but, in his effort to get into
position to do so, limb after limb of dead wood broke, and he came falling
to the earth, amid the startled looks of the chief and the cries of the
children.
The ground was soft, and his body lay for a time half imbedded in it.
He was senseless, and blood streamed from his nose and reddened his eyes.
The old chief seized his arm and tried to raise him, but the effort
brought no sign of life, and his body was lowered slowly back again by the
agonized father, who sat down and dropped his head on his son's breast.
Mr. Mann brought water and wet the boy's lips and bathed his brow. He then
placed his hand over the boy's heart and held it there. There was a long
silence. The old chief watched the teacher's hand. He seemed waiting for a
word of hope; but Mr. Mann did not speak.
The old chief lifted his head at last, and said; appealingly:
"Boston tilicum, you do not know how I feel! You do not know--the birds
know--_you_ do not know!"
The teacher rubbed the boy's breast and arms, and said:
"He will revive."
"What, Boston tilicum?"
"He will _live_."
"My boy?"
"Yes."
The dark face brightened. The old man clasped the boy's hand and drew it
to his breast. The children attempted to brush the earth out of the young
hero's dark, matted hair, but the old chief said, mysteriously:
"No touch him! he is mine."
At last a convulsive movement passed over the boy's body. The teacher
again pressed his hand on the heart of his pupil, and he quickly
exclaimed: "It beats."
The fiery sun gleamed from the snowy mountains. There were cool murmurs of
winds in the trees, and they sent forth a resinous odor into the air. The
balm dropped down like a messenger of healing.
Presently the boy's eyes opened and gazed steadily into the blue air.
The eagles were wheeling about the trees. The boy watched them, as though
nothing had passed. They were making narrowing circles, and at last each
alighted on the new nest beside their young.
He turned his face slowly toward his father.
"Saved!" he said. "They are happy. I fell. Let's go."
He rose up. As he did so the male eagle rose from his nest and, uttering a
glad scream, wheeled in the sky and made his way through the crimson haze
toward the fishing grounds of the lower Columbia.
The chief's eye followed him for a time; then the old man turned a happy
face on the schoolmaster and children and said:
"I know how he feels--the Manitou overhead--he made the hearts of all;
yours--the birds--mine. He is glad!"
There was something beautiful and pathetic in the old chief's sense of the
common heart and feeling of all conscious beings. The very eagles seemed
to understand it; and Master Mann, as he turned away from the school-house
that day, said to Gretchen:
"I myself am being taught. I am glad to learn all this large life. I hope
that you will one day become a teacher."
Gretchen went home that afternoon with a glad heart. Benjamin did not
return to the school again for several days, and when he came back it
seemed to be with a sense of humiliation. He seemed to feel somehow that
he ought not to have fallen from the tree.
The fourth of July came, and Master Mann had invited the school to come
together on the holiday for patriotic exercises. He had one of the pupils
read the Declaration of Independence on the occasion, and Gretchen played
the President's March on the violin. He himself made an historical
address, and then joined in some games out of doors under the trees.
He brought to the school-house that day an American flag, which he hung
over the desk during the exercises. When the school went out to play he
said:
"I wish I could hang the flag from a pole, or from the top of one of the
trees."
Benjamin's face brightened.
"I will go," he said; "I will go _up_."
"Hang it on the eagle's nest," said one of the pupils. "The eagle is the
national bird."
Mr. Mann saw that to suspend the national emblem from the eagle's nest
would be a patriotic episode of the day, and he gave the flag to Benjamin,
saying:
"Beware of the rotten limbs."
"I no woman," said Benjamin; and, waving the flag, he moved like a
squirrel up the trees. He placed the flag on the nest, while the eagles
wheeled around him, screaming wildly. He descended safely, and made the
incident an object lesson, as Mr. Mann repeated the ode to the American
eagle, found at that time in many reading-books.
While Mr. Mann was doing so, and had reached the line--
"Bird of Columbia, well art thou," etc.,
one of the eagles swept down to the nest and seized the banner in his
talons. He rose again into the air and circled high, then with a swift,
strong curve of the wings, came down to the nest again, and, seizing the
flag, tore it from the nest and bore it aloft to the sky.
[Illustration: _The eagle soared away in the blue heavens, and the flag
streamed after him in his talons._]
It was a beautiful sight. The air was clear, the far peaks were serene,
and the glaciers of Mount Hood gleamed like a glory of crystallized light.
The children cheered. The bird soared away in the blue heavens, and the
flag streamed after him in his talons. He dropped the flag at last over
a dark, green forest. The children cheered again.
It was miles away.
"I go find it," said Benjamin; and he darted away from the place and was
not seen until the next day, when he returned, bringing the flag with him.
Marlowe Mann never forgot that fourth of July on the Columbia.