'And what think you it is doing? Why, it is eyeing you and me. It is my pet condor. The only bird I do not feed; but the creature loves me well for all that. He is suspicious of your presence. Now watch, and I will bring him down like an arrow.'
The hermit waved a handkerchief in a strange way, 226 and with one fell downward swoop, in a few seconds the monster eagle had alighted near us.
Well may the condor be called 'king of the air,' I thought, for never before had I seen so majestic a bird. He was near us now, and scrutinizing us with that bold fierce eye of his, as some chieftain in the brave days of old might have gazed upon spies that he was about to order away to execution. I believed then—and I am still of the same opinion—that there was something akin to pity and scorn in his steadfast looks, as if we had been brought here for his especial delectation and study.
'Poor wretched bipeds!' he seemed to say; 'not even possessed of feathers, no clothes of their own, obliged to wrap themselves in the hair and skins of dead quadrupeds. No beaks, no talons; not even the wings of a miserable bat. Never knew what it was to mount and soar into the blue sky to meet the morning sun; never floated free as the winds far away in the realms of space; never saw the world spread out beneath them like a living panorama, its woods and forests mere patches of green or purple, its lakes like sheets of shimmering ice, its streams like threads of spiders' webs before the day has drunk the dew, its very deserts dwarfed by distance till the guanacos and the ostriches[15] look like mites, and herds of wild horses appear but crawling ants. Never knew what it was to circle round the loftiest summits of the snow-clad voiceless Andes, while down in the valleys beneath dark clouds rolled fiercely on, and lightnings played across the darkness; nor to perch cool and safe on peak or pinnacle, while below on earth's dull level the hurricane Pampero was levelling house and hut and tree; or the burning breath of the Zonda was sweeping over the land, scorching every flower and leaf, drinking every drop of dew, draining even the blood of moving beings till eyes ache and brains reel, till man himself looks haggard, 227 wild, and worn, and the beasts of the forest, hidden in darkling caves, go mad and rend their young.'
The hermit returned with us to our camping-ground just as great bats began to circle and wheel around, as butterflies were folding their wings and going to sleep beneath the leaves, and the whole woodland glen began to awake to the screaming of night-birds, to the mournful howling of strange monkeys, and hoarse growl of beasts of prey.
We sat together till far into the night listening to story after story of the wild adventures of our new but nameless hero, and till the moon—so high above us now that the pine-trees no longer cast their shadows across the glade—warned us it was time to retire.
'Good night, boys all,' said the hermit; 'I will come again to-morrow.'
He turned and walked away, his potro boots making no sound on the sward. We watched him till the gloom of the forest seemed to swallow him up.
'What a strange being!' said Archie, with a sigh.
'And what a lonely life to lead!' said Donald.