(原版)澳大利亞語文第六冊 LESSON 44

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LESSON 44 THE MOTHER EAGLE

THE MOTHER EAGLE

For several days I had been watching the eagle, the Bald Eagle, and its lines of flight, and concluded that its nest was somewhere in the hills north-west of the big lake. Next morning the eagle showed me where its nest was. I was hunting along the top of the cliff, when I observed him coming far away, and hid in the underbush. He passed very near, and following I saw him standing on a ledge near the top of the cliff. Just below him, in the top of a stunted tree, growing out of the face of the rock, was a huge mass of sticks that formed the nest, with a great mother-eagle standing by, feeding the little ones.

It was scaring business, that three hundred-feet climb up the sheer face of the mountain. From the foot of the tree, the crevice in which it grew led upwards to the right, then doubled back to the ledge above the nest on which the eagle was standing when I discovered him. The lip of the crevice made a dizzy path that one might follow by moving crabwise with face to the cliff and only its roughness to cling to with the fingers.

I tried it at last, crept up, out twenty feet and back ten, and dropped with a breath of relief to a broad ledge covered with bones and fish-scales, the relies of many a savage\feast. Below me, almost within reach, was the nest, with two dark scraggy young birds resting on twigs and grass, with fish, flesh, and fowl in a gory, skinny, scaly ring about them, the most savage-looking household into which I had ever looked unbidden.

Half an hour later I had gained the top of the cliff and started eastwards towards the lake, coming down by a much easier way than that by which I went up. One day when I came to a little thicket on the cliff where I used to lie and watch the nest through my glass, I found that one eaglet had gone. The other stood on the edge of the nest, looking down fearfully into the abyss [1] whither, no doubt, his bolder brother had plunged, and calling disconsolately [2] from time to time. His whole attitude showed plainly that he was hungry and cross and lonesome.

Presently the mother-eagle came swiftly up from the valley and there was food in her talons. She came to the edge of the nest, hovered over it for a moment so as to give the hungry eaglet a sight and smell of the food, then went slowly down the valley taking the food with her, telling the little one in her own way to come and he should have it. He called after her loudly from the nest and spread his wings a dozen times to follow. But the plunge was too awful, his heart failed him, and he settled back in the nest, pulled his head down into his shoulders, shut his eyes, and tried to forget he was hungry.

In a little time the mother came back again, this time without food, and hovered over the nest, trying in every way to induce the little one to leave it. She succeeded at last, when with a desperate effort he sprang upwards and flapped to the ledge above, on which I had sat and watched the nest; then, after surveying [3] the world gravely from his new position, he flapped back to the nest, and turned a deaf ear to all his mother's assurances [4] that he could fly easily to those tree-tops below, if only he would.

Suddenly, as if discouraged, she rose well above him. I held my breath, for I knew what was coming. The little fellow stood on the edge of the nest, looking down at the plunge he dared not take. There was a sharp cry from behind, which made him alert, tense as a watch-spring— the next instant the mother-eagle had swooped, striking the nest at his feet, sending his support of twigs and himself with them into the air together. He was afloat now on the blue air in spite of himself, and he flapped lustily [5] for life.

Over him, under him, beside him, hovered the mother on tireless wings, calling softly that she was there. But the awful fear of the depths and the lance tops of the spruces [6] was upon the little one; his flapping grew more wild; he fell faster and faster; suddenly, more in fright, it seemed to me, than because he had spent his strength, he lost his balance, and tipped his head downwards in the air. It was all over now; he folded his wings to be dashed in pieces among the trees.

Then like a flash the old mother-eagle shot under him, his despairing feet touched her broad shoulders between her wings. He righted himself, rested an instant, found his head, then she dropped like a shot from under him, and left him to come down on his own wings. A handful of feathers torn out by his claws floated down slowly after them.

It was all the work of an instant before I lost them in the trees below. And when I found them again with my glass the eaglet was on the top of a great pine and the mother was feeding him. Then it flashed on me for the first time what the prophet meant: "As the eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings—so the Lord…"

—DR . WILLIAM J. LONG

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[1] abyss: Deep hole, chasm.

[2] disconsolately: Hopelessly.

[3] surveying: Carefully looking over.

[4] assurances: Efforts to restore his confidence.

[5] lustily: Strongly, vigorously.

[6] spruce: A tall white tree.