82 THE WHITE-TAILED SEA EAGLE. 



8 



rey fall into the vale below. He knew this was the prelude to a life or 

 eath struggle with the infuriated bird. All now depended on his coolness 

 and absence of the other eagle. Should either condition fail he read his 

 fate in lurid letters — hurled from the narrow ledge down into the abyss 

 below with broken skull and lacerated form. He drew back under an 

 •abutment of rock, and not an instant too soon, for the eagle swooped down 

 like a living thunderbolt upon the very spot where he had crouched the 

 moment before. The rush of her descent sounded in his ears like a whirl- 

 wind. Her nearest pinion grazed his cheek, and, as she drew off like a flash 

 of lightning to make a final swoop at him, he fired with no steady hand. 

 Between him and the coming eagle there was but a cloud of smoke. To his 

 unbounded relief, when the smoke cleared away, the bird had disappeared. 

 Peering over the cliff he saw the savage mistress of the mountain falling a 

 huddled mass of blood-stained feathers down into the glen. Before he 

 could rise from his prostrate position a terrific blow struck him on the back 

 of the head. He sprung up on his knees, turned, and found himself facing 

 the dreaded male eagle of Craigmaskeldie. The blood was streaming from 

 his head, and his heart sunk as he gazed on this merciless foe which now 

 rushed upon him. He was hurled on his back, his hands, which he held 

 over his face, were torn. Again he rose to his knees and seized his knife 

 (the unused pistol was out of his reach). The eagle closed with him, and 

 incessantly struck at him with wings, beak, and talons, while he lunged at 

 the bird with his knife ; but such was the fury and rapidity of its motions 

 that no serious wound was inflicted. He felt that he was growing weak 

 from loss of blood, and, making a final effort, seized the eagle s throat with 

 his right hand and one of its legs with his left ; but was again thrown on 

 his back. They rolled over one another, and yet, strange to say, they kept 

 the ledge. The bird freed its neck with a convulsive wrench, and plunging 

 its talons in his shoulder prepared to drive its beak into his eyes. With a 

 last effort, in which despair and fury fought for mastery, he struck the 

 eagle on the breast with his clenched fist, then seized his pistol and fired on 

 the ferocious bird. A loud scream rent the air. The eagle rose high, with 

 a broken, fluttering flight ; some drops of blood fell on his face. He waited 

 in dreadful suspense for a renewal of the conflict, but the bird had dis- 

 appeared — withdrawn into the evening sky to sink in death, perchance, on a 

 tuft of heather. The man tried to rise upon the ledge and fainted away." 



The pistol shots had been heard and the struggle seen from 

 below. Some hardy shepherds ascended the precipice, and, 

 making use of the daring lover's rope, brought him down in 

 safety, but unconscious. It is needless to say that such a con- 

 vincing proof of love won the heart of his future partner in 

 life, although it destroyed both the eyrie and the eagles of 

 Craigmaskeldie. To prove its authenticity, an interesting account 

 of this eagle's nest will be found in a letter of the late 

 Dr Guthrie, in the Sunday at Home for January 1874. I think 

 they had been golden eagles, with the order of Nature reversed, 

 for the male in this instance seems to have been very much the 

 largest of the two ; in fact, he was amongst eagles what Juliet's 

 old nurse says Paris was amongst men — 



" O, he's a lovely gentleman ! 

 Romeo's a dishclout to him, — an eagle, Madam, 

 Hath not so green, so quick, so fair an eye, 

 As Paris hath." 



