But—make no mistake about this point—he who came then, grandly, proudly sweeping over the blue, dim ridges, was not the Chieftain himself, for this was not the Chieftain's territory, but the Chieftain's son; he who lived, as you will remember, upon the other, or south, side of Loch Royal.
Haughtily, statelily, as a king might go to his throne, so did the Chieftain's son let himself down, in stupendous hundred-foot spirals, to a pinnacle of rock, jagged, saw-edged, and perpendicular, about two hundred yards away; and the ravens and the gray crows, who saw him coming, made great and sudden hostile outcry at first, and then, as he folded, foot by foot, his immense pinions about him, and sat there erect, with his piercing, scowling gaze bent upon them, they were dumb.
And Pig Head, aching with cramp and cold in his hiding-place, knew that the quarry was at hand. But if you think, because the eagle was at hand, that the time was at hand too, you don't know eagles. They may be, upon occasion, as quick as the spring of death, but they can also be as slow as the wrath of Heaven. And that bird there, the great, grand, haughty, unbending Aquila chrysoetus, that golden eagle, sat. I say, he sat. And there, so far as he was concerned, appeared to be an end of it. He might have been a carven copestone of the very granite fang he sat upon, for all the appearance of life he gave, except that occasionally—say at fifteen-minute intervals—he winked a yellow-lidded wink. And the wink was almost as unlifelike and uncanny as the bird.
And the gray crows and the ravens gulped and quarreled, with one eye upon the eagle and one upon their job; and Pig Head—Pig Head sat and cursed that eagle, from his horny beak to his barred tail, through chattering—and aching—teeth. But the eagle never moved a feather.
We are told that Alexander sighed for other worlds to conquer. So it was with the Chieftain, who was not Alexander.
After his wife had gone a-hunting eastward—a wonderful and gigantic silhouette floating and dwindling into the furnace of the rising sun—the Chieftain sat upon his ledge of rock, staring across the gleaming, painted, glassy expanse of Loch Royal, southward, to the dominions of his son.
He had seen his son, a speck in the dawnlight, invisible to our eyes, sailing from peak to upflung peak. He had seen him suddenly check and circle downwards. And then—he had not seen him.
He had waited two hours, with that patience which birds and reptiles have, and still he had not seen him. Yet, if during that time he had risen, the Chieftain must have seen him. And the Chieftain knew that. He knew also that a golden eagle very rarely makes a "kill" so big that he has to remain with it two hours. The alternative, therefore, would seem to be death or carrion; and the way in which he had circled down would seem to suggest carrion. And it is written among the laws of the king of birds that when carrion is about, the strict rules and regulations as to the inviolability of the frontiers may be, in some degree, broken.
Therefore the king unfurled his overshadowing vans, and launched himself down the lake with mighty, slow, powerful strokes, like the steady thrust of marine engines. He would go and see.