“Sure enough, a free and independent bird like that will never get used to the prison,” added others.
“He’s not like us,” said some one.
“Oh well, he’s a bird, and we’re human beings.”
“The eagle, pals, is the king of the woods,” began Skouratof; but that day nobody paid any attention to him.
One afternoon, when the drum beat for beginning work, they took the eagle, tied his beak (for he struck a desperate attitude), and took him out of the prison on to the ramparts. The twelve convicts of the gang were extremely anxious to know where he would go to. It was a strange thing: they all seemed as happy as though they had themselves got their freedom.
“Oh, the wretched brute. One wants to do him a kindness, and he tears your hand for you by way of thanks,” said the man who held him, looking almost lovingly at the spiteful bird.
“Let him fly off, Mikitka!”
“It doesn’t suit him being a prisoner; give him his freedom, his jolly freedom.”
They threw him from the ramparts on to the steppe. It was just at the end of autumn, a gray, cold day. The wind whistled on the bare steppe and went groaning through the yellow dried-up grass. The eagle made off directly, flapping his wounded wing, as if in a hurry to quit us and get himself a shelter from our piercing eyes. The convicts watched him intently as he went along with his head just above the grass.
“Do you see him, hey?” said one very pensively.