102 Wilderness Ways. 



and I doubted whether the mother-eagle would stand 

 it. A dozen times she seemed on the point of drop- 

 ping on my head to tear it with her talons ; but always 

 she veered off as I looked up quietly, and Old White- 

 head, with the mark of my bullet strong upon him, 

 swept between her and me and seemed to say, " Wait, 

 wait. I don't understand; but he can kill us if he 

 will and the little ones are in his power." Now he 

 was closer to me than ever, and the fear was vanishing. 

 But so also was the fierceness. 



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, upon which Cheplahgan 

 was standing when I discovered him. The lip of 

 this crevice made a dizzy path that one might follow 

 by moving crabwise, his face to the cliff, with only 

 its roughnesses to cling to with his fingers. I tried 

 it at last, crept up and out twenty feet, and back ten, 

 and dropped with a great breath of relief to a broad 

 ledge covered with bones and fish scales, the relics 

 of many a savage feast. Below me, almost within 

 reach, was the nest, with two dark, scraggly 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 ever 

 looked unbidden. 



