CHAPTER XI.
THE EAGLES' EYRIE.
'Where, yonder, in the upper air
The solemn eagles watch the sun.'
Did you ever see the sun rise? I hope so; but still I am sure you never saw it from such a point as that whereon their winged conductors gently deposited the castle and the forest children that early summer morning.
'Jump out,' said the voice they had all learnt to obey, when the air-boat came to a stand-still a few feet above the rock. And the children, who as yet had noticed nothing of the ground above which they were hovering, for their eyes were fixed on the pink and azure and emerald and gold, spreading out like a fairy kaleidoscope on the sky before them, joined hands and sprang fearlessly on to they knew not what. And as they did so, with a murmuring warble of farewell, the birds flapped their wings, and the air-boat rose swiftly into the air and disappeared from view.
The four looked at each other.
'Has godmother sailed away in it? I thought she was going to stay with us,' exclaimed Maia in a disappointed tone.
'Oh, Maia,' said Silva, 'you don't yet understand godmother a bit. But we must not stand here. You know the way, Waldo?'
'Here,' where they were standing, was, as I said, a rock, ragged and bare, though lower down, its sides were clothed with short thymy grass. And stretching behind them the children saw a beautiful expanse of hilly ground, beautiful though treeless, for the heather and bracken and gorse that covered it looked soft and mellow in the distance, more especially with the lovely light and colour just now reflected from the sky.