306 ON THE EDGE OF THE WILDERNESS 
spotting the nest. It was nearly time now for 
the young eagles to fly; a few days more and they 
would have been safe! But this was not to be. 
There they were, up on the rim of the nest, great 
brown conspicuous things with eyes scanning the 
sky for a vision of father or mother coming with 
food. The three men exclaimed in triumph, 
dropped down the rock into the scrub, and made 
as fast as they could for the eagle tree. 
Finding a spot not far away where they could 
secure an open sight of the nest, they concealed 
themselves under the boughs of a low hemlock 
and waited for one or both of the parent birds to 
return. They were warned first by the sudden 
impatient racket of the two eaglets, and then by 
a far, high scream from the air, before they got 
a glimpse of the parent bird at all. It was the 
mother returning with a fish. She did not see 
the danger lurking under the hemlock screen, nor 
catch the glint of steel peeping through. Unsus- 
pecting and happy, she dropped lightly as a para- 
chute to the nest rim by her babies, and began to 
give them food. 
Three tongues of flame spit from the hemlock 
