I soon despaired of seeing any thing of the eagles. Looking overhead, I could not see the sky—much less any object depending upon its brightness for being made visible.
I began to think of going back to the river-bank; and had already stopped in my tracks, when I perceived a slender list of light stealing through the timber beyond. It might be that I had arrived near the other side of the island. In any case, it was worth while going on to see; and I proceeded toward the light.
It proved only an opening among the trees, where a gigantic deadwood, divested of its leaves, permitted the sunlight to descend upon the earth.
The tree, an enormous liriodendron, had been struck by lightning, and long since dead. The parasites, that would otherwise have been sustained by its sap, had perished along with it, and dropped from its branches, lay strewed upon the ground below. Its huge limbs, blanched and twigless, were stretched like skeleton arms toward the sky. Its main stem had been broken off near the summit; yet still overtopped the surrounding forest.
In the fork where the fracture had occurred, I could see a huge protuberance that did not seem part of the tree. It was a collection of dead sticks and branches, rudely wattled together, evidently the nest for which I was searching.
As I stood regarding it with upturned eyes, a strange sound came into my ears, almost filling them with its harsh intonations. I can compare it to nothing so near to what it seemed, as the filing of a huge frame saw, or the laugh of a maniac escaped from his keeper.
As I stood listening, it seemed to repeat itself in echoes as if the whole island had suddenly been converted into a pandemonium.
I was not dismayed. The sound was not unknown to me. I knew it to be the scream of the white-headed eagle.
I had just time to get my rifle ready for firing, when four of these grand birds—the parents and brood of which I had heard spoken—came sailing overhead. Their broad-spreading wings shadowed the patch of open ground as they soared majestically above the blighted tree.
I was in hopes that one or other of them would alight, and give me a chance of obtaining something like a fair shot. But in this I was disappointed. Even over their own nest they were shy. It had been long forsaken, and the first that uttered the cry had sprung up from it, alarmed by my presence below.