"Whoop! whoop! So ho! He mounts! he mounts!" A loud shout from the rear of the party interrupted her. In the earnestness of their conversation, they had cleared the confines of the winding lane, and entered, without observing it, a beautiful stretch of meadow-land, intersected by small rivulets and water-courses, sloping down to the lake shore. Some of the grooms and varlets had spread out over the flat grass-land, beating the reeds with their hawking-poles, and cheering their merry spaniels. The shout was elicited by the sudden uprising of the great, long-necked hermit-fisher, from a broad reed belt by the stream-side, flapping his broad gray vans heavily on the light air, and stretching his long yellow legs far behind him, as he soared skyward, with his harsh, clanging cry.
All eyes were instantly turned to the direction of the shout, and every heart bounded at the sight of the quarry.
"Whoop! Diamond! whoop!" cried the young girl, as she cast off her gallant falcon; and then, seeing her lover throw off his long-winged peregrine to join in the flight, "A wager, Aradas. My glove on 'Diamond' against 'Helvellyn.' What will you wager, Beausire?"
"My heart!"
"Nay! I have that already. Else you swore falsely. Against your turquoise ring. I'll knot my kerchief with it."
"A wager! Now ride, Guendolen; ride; if you would see the wager won."
And they gave the head to their horses, and rode furiously. No riding is so desperate, it is said, no excitement so tremendous, as that of the short, fierce, reckless gallop in the chase where bird hunts bird through the boundless fields of air. Not even the tremendous burst and rally of the glorious hunts-up, with the heart-inspiring crash of the hounds, and the merry blare of the bugles, when the hart of grease has broken covert, and the pack are running him breast high.
In the latter, the heart may beat, the pulse may throb and quiver, but the eye is unoccupied, and free to direct the hand, to rule the courser's gallop, and mark the coming leap. In the former, the eye, as the heart, and the pulse, and the ear, are all bent aloft, up! up! with the straining, towering birds; while the steed must pick its own way over smooth or rough, and the rider take his leaps as they chance to come, unseen and unexpected. Such was the glorious mystery of Rivers!
The wind, what little of it there was when the heron rose, was from the southward, and the bird flew before it directly toward the cottage of Kenric, rising slowly but strongly into the upper regions of air. The two falcons, which were nearly half a mile astern of the quarry when they were cast off, flew almost, as it seemed, with the speed of lightning, in parallel lines about fifty yards apart, rising as he rose, and evidently gaining on him at every stroke of their long, sharp pinions, in pursuit. And in pursuit of those, their riders sitting well back in their saddles, and holding them hard by the head, the high-blooded horses tore across the marshy plain, driving fragments of turf high into the air at every stroke, and sweeping over the drains and water-courses which obstructed their career, like the unbridled wind. It was a glorious spectacle—a group of incomparable splendor, in coloring, in grace, in vivacity, motion, fire, sweeping through that panorama of magnificent mountain scenery.
The day was clear and sunny, the skies soft and transparently blue; but, ever and anon, huge clouds came driving over the scene, casting vast purple-shadows over the green meadows and the mirrored lake. One of these now came sweeping overhead, and toward it towered the contending birds. The heron, when he saw that he was pursued, uttered a louder and harsher cry, and began to scale the sky in great aërial circles. Silent, in smaller circles, towered the falcons, each emulous to out-top the others. Up! up! higher and higher! Neither victorious yet, neither vanquished. Now! now! the falcons are on a level with him, and again rings the clanging shriek of the wild water-bird, and he redoubles his last effort. He rises, he out-tops the hawks, and all vanish in an instant from the eyes of the pursuers, swallowed up in the depths of the great golden cloud.