I
N the ancient wild there were three great silences that held their habitations unassailed. They were the silence of the deep of the lake, the silence of the dark heart of the cedar swamp, and the silence of the upper air, high above the splintered peak of the mountain.
To this immeasurable quiet of upper air but one of all the earth sounds could come. That one sound was of such quality that it seemed rather to intensify the silence than disturb it. It was so absolutely alone, so naked of all that murmurous background which sustains yet obscures the individual sounds of earth's surface, that it served merely as an accent to the silence. It was the fine, vibrant hiss of the smitten air against the tense feathers of the soaring eagle.
Through the immense, unclouded solitude the eagle swung majestically in a great circle. At one point in the vast, deliberate swing he was directly above the bald, deep-riven peak of granite upthrust from its mantling forest of firs,—directly above it, at a height of not more than a few hundred feet. The rest of his course took him far out over the soundless spaces of the landscape, which formed an enormous bowl rimmed by the turquoise horizon. The bowl was all a many-shaded green, stains of the light green of birch and poplar blending with the austere green-black of fir, cedar, and hemlock. Here and there through the dense colour gleamed sharply the loops and coils of three watercourses and at the centre of the bowl, glowing in the transparent brilliancy of the northern day, shone the clear mirror of the lake. At that point of his aërial path when the eagle swung farthest from the peak, he hung straight over the middle of the lake and looked down into its depths.
"HIS COURSE TOOK HIM FAR OUT OVER THE SOUNDLESS SPACES."
Though no lightest breath was astir far down on the lake surface and not a tree-top swayed in the forest, up here where the eagle was soaring streamed a viewless and soundless wind. So it came about that at some portions of his swing the eagle's wide, apparently moveless wings would tilt a little, careening ever so slightly, and their tense-webbed feathers would set themselves at a delicately different angle to the air-current. When this took place, there would be a different note in that strange whisper. The vibrant hiss would change to a faint, ghostly humming, which again would fade away as the rigid feathers readjusted themselves to another point of the gigantic curve.
Over the soaring black wings the intense sapphire of the zenith thrilled and melted; but the eyes of the eagle were not directed upward, since there was nothing above him but sky, and air, and the infinitude of silence. As he swung, his gleaming, snow-white head and neck were stretched downward toward the earth. His fierce yellow eyes, unwavering, brilliant, and clear like crystal, deep set beneath straight, overhanging brows, searched the far panorama with an incredibly piercing gaze. At such a distance that the most penetrating human eye—the eye of a sailor, a plains' ranger, a backwoods' huntsman, or an enumerator of the stars—could not discern him in his soundless altitude, he could mark the fall of a leaf or the scurry of a mouse in the sedge-grass.
Though the range of his marvellous vision was so vast, the eagle could not see beneath the surfaces of the lake except when he soared straight over it. At one point in his course the baffling reflections of the surface vanished, and his gaze pierced to the bottom. But from all other points the lake presented to him either a mirror of stainless blue, or a dazzling shield of bright steel.
For an hour or more, on wide, untiring wings, the great bird sailed and watched. The furtive life of the wilderness, all unaware of that high impending doom, revealed itself to him, yet he saw nothing to draw him down out of his realm of silence.
Except for that mysterious whisper of the smitten air in his own wings, it was to the eagle as if all the action and movement of earth had been struck dumb. Once he saw a black cow moose, tormented with flies, lurch out madly from the thickets and plunge wallowing into the lake. High splashed and flashed the water about her floundering bulk; but not a whisper of it came up to him. Once he saw a pair of swimming loons stretching their necks alternately as high as they could above the water, and opening wide their straight, sharp beaks. He well knew the strident, wild cries with which they were answering each other, setting loose a rout of crazy echoes all up and down the shores. But not a ghost of an echo reached him. It was all dumb show. And once, on the lower slope of the mountain, an ancient fir-tree, its foothold on the rocks worn away by frost and flood of countless seasons, fell into the ravine. He saw the mighty downward sweep and plunge, the convulsion of branches below; but of the sullen roar that startled the mountainside no faintest sound arose to him.
At last, as he was wheeling over the centre of the lake, his inescapable eye saw something which interested him. His great wings flapped heavily, checking his course. He tipped suddenly, half-shut his wings, and shot straight downward perhaps a thousand feet. Here he stopped his descent with a sharp upward turn which made the wind whistle harshly in his wings. And here he hung, hovering, watching, waiting for the opportunity that now seemed close at hand.