To gain the full sport of hawking a heron must not be put up from its feeding-ground, where it is heavy with its meal, and has no time to get its pace on before it is pounced upon by the more active hawk, but it must be aloft, traveling from point to point, probably from the fish-stream to the heronry. Thus to catch the bird on passage was the prelude of all good sport. The object to which the Prince had pointed was but a black dot in the southern sky, but his strained eyes had not deceived him, and both Bishop and King agreed that it was indeed a heron, which grew larger every instant as it flew in their direction.
“Whistle him off, sire! Whistle off the gerfalcon!” cried the Bishop.
“Nay, nay, he is overfar. She would fly at check.”
“Now, sire, now!” cried the Prince, as the great bird with the breeze behind him came sweeping down the sky.
The King gave the shrill whistle, and the well-trained hawk raked out to the right and to the left to make sure which quarry she was to follow. Then, spying the heron, she shot up in a swift ascending curve to meet him.
“Well flown, Margot! Good bird!” cried the King, clapping his hands to encourage the hawk, while the falconers broke into the shrill whoop peculiar to the sport.
Going on her curve, the hawk would soon have crossed the path of the heron; but the latter, seeing the danger in his front and confident in his own great strength of wing and lightness of body, proceeded to mount higher in the air, flying in such small rings that to the spectators it almost seemed as if the bird was going perpendicularly upward.
“He takes the air!” cried the King. “But strong as he flies, he cannot out fly Margot. Bishop, I lay you ten gold pieces to one that the heron is mine.”
“I cover your wager, sire,” said the Bishop. “I may not take gold so won, and yet I warrant that there is an altar-cloth somewhere in need of repairs.”
“You have good store of altar-cloths, Bishop, if all the gold I have seen you win at tables goes to the mending of them,” said the King. “Ah! by the rood, rascal, rascal! See how she flies at check!”