His editor “liked” the idea, but demanded that it should be rendered in what the journalist thought was the most illiterate English. The journalist and the editor sneered at each other about prose for some time: and the editor won. The illiterate account was penned, mauled over by a sub-editor, and finally displayed prominently on the front page of his paper. But the editor only leered when the journalist asked for his taxi-cab fare.
The falcon, leaving the woods near London came once more. The woods were ten miles from St. Paul’s, and it took him eight minutes to fly to the dome.
His end was an epic one, and becomes such a noble spirit. From what the journalist dreamed, he was able to imagine the death, and here it is.
One morning by the lake side stood a gray stump, a tall thing on two stalk-like legs. The gray stump remained motionless, as though watching his own dull image in the water.
It was a heron fishing.
He remained still for many minutes. Something passed in the water, a long neck shot forward, and a gleaming fish, pierced by the beak, drawn from the lake. The heron, who had paid a visit every morning from the heronry at Tonbridge, flew away; a slow-flapping, unwieldy thing, over a yard in length. His feet stretched out behind him, his head was tucked in between his shoulders.
The falcon was about. He stooped at the heron. Perhaps the spirit of ancestors, who left the gauntletted wrists of falconers to fly at the heron of olden times, was about him: for how else should he have dared that pointed beak? Rolling like a ship in a gale, heavily and in distress, the heron turned on his back, and held his beak pointed at the stooping falcon.
The hawk swerved; swept up again; regained height, wrapped his wings about him and plunged. Again the beak met him, once more he swerved.
So the combat went on. Nearer the keeper’s cottage they drifted. Now the heron was calling in distress, Kaa-ack, kaa-ack. Fell the halbert-head, darted the spear-beak, slipped the halbert-head. It was to be a fight to the death, till one should misjudge by the minutest error of time, the plundering heron or the outlawed falcon. The small birds hid themselves in the bushes—the sound of a shot rang out, the heron tumbled in alarm, recovered, flapped away; an eddy of gray feathers swirled in the wind, the echo of the report shivered back from the woods—and the falcon fell on the grass, its beak gaping, and panting for breath.