12 THE ATTACK ON THE SWANS. 



her impatient mate, a female eagle seemed anxious to 

 persuade him not to abandon his watch, and accord- 

 ingly uttered, at three slow intervals, a keen strident 

 cry, which resounded along the river-border. At this 

 signal the male partly opened his wings, and responded 

 with a similar cry, which I can only compare to the wild 

 shriek of laughter that occasionally breaks forth in a 

 lunatic asylum. 



" While, with their hands upon their oars, my negroes 

 abandoned the boat to the current of the river, I followed 

 with my gaze every movement of the eagles, who suffered 

 to pass by them undisturbed myriads of ducks and teals, 

 as prey unworthy of their appetites : so I understood a 

 moment later. 



" At length my ears were rent by a piercing cry, that 

 of the female. At the same time I heard, like the hoarse 

 sound of a trumpet, the voice of a troop of swans, which 

 were cleaving the sky with snow-white pinions. Turning 

 my eyes northwards I quickly caught sight of the voyagers, 

 beating the air with their short wings, their necks out- 

 stretched, their feet closed up against the belly, and their 

 glances ranging the horizon in fear of danger. The flock 

 was composed of five swans flying, as is their custom, in a 

 triangular or wedge-like phalanx ; but the one at the head 

 of the convoy seemed more fatigued than the others. It 

 was this poor wretch whom the eagles selected as their prey. 



" At the moment of his flight past the oak where the 

 male bird was in ambush, the latter suddenly unfurled 

 his wings, raised a formidable cry, and, like a gloomy 

 meteor, darted on his resigned victim, while his four 

 companions allowed themselves to drop into the waters 

 of the Mississippi. 



