“You have forgotten me,” cried Charley Stewart, who had now somewhat recovered his wind. “I will go down over the craig. Come, then, Peter!—get out your hair-line. It will not break with my weight.”
“By the Rood but thou art a gallant little chield!” said Peter.
“Oh, the blessings of the virgin on thee, my dearest Charley!” cried Bessy MacDermot, embracing him. “And yet,” added she, with hesitation, “why should I put Alice Asher’s boy to such peril, even to save mine own child? Oh, canst thou think of no other means? I cannot put Charley Stewart in peril.”
“Nay,” said Peter, “I know of no means; and, in truth, the poor bairn is like enough to have been already half devoured by the young eagles.”
“Merciful Mother of God!” cried poor Bessy, half fainting at the horrible thought. “Oh, my baby, my baby!”
“Come, old man,” cried Charley Stewart, with great determination, “we have no time to waste—we have lost too much already. Where is the hair-line you spake of?—Tut, I must seek for it myself;” and rushing into the cot, he leaped upon a table, made one spring at the rafters, and, catching hold of them, he hoisted himself up, gained a footing on them, and ran along them like a cat, till he found the great bundle of hair-line. “Now,” said he, throwing it down, and jumping after it; “come away, good Peter, as fast as thy legs can carry thee.”
Having reached the summit of the crag by a circuitous path, they could now descry the two eagles, to which the nest belonged, soaring aloft at a great distance. They looked over the brow of the cliff, as far as they could stretch with safety, but although old Peter was so well acquainted with the place where the nest was built, as at once to be able to fix on the very spot whence the descent ought to be made, the verge of the rock there projected itself so far over the ledge where the nest rested, as to render it quite invisible from above. They could only perceive the thick sea of pine foliage that rose up the slope below, and clustered closely against the base of the precipice. A few small stunted fir trees grew scattered upon the otherwise bare summit where they stood. Old Peter sat himself down behind one of these, and placed a leg on each side of it, so as to secure himself from all chance of being pulled over the precipice by any sudden jerk, whilst Charley’s little fingers were actively employed in undoing the great bundle of hair-line, and in tying one end of it round his body, and under his armpits. The unhappy mother was now busily assisting the boy, and now moving restlessly about, in doubtful hesitation whether she should yet allow him to go down. Now she was gazing at the distant eagles, and wringing her hands in terror lest they should return to their nest; and torn as she was between her cruel apprehensions for her infant on the one hand, and her doubts and fears about Charley Stewart on the other, she ejaculated the wildest and most incoherent prayers to all the saints for the protection and safety of both.
“Now,” said Charley Stewart at length; “I’m ready. Keep a firm hold, Peter, and lower me gently.”
“Stay, stay, boy!” cried the old man. “Stick my skian dhu into your hoe. If the owners of the nest should come home, by the Rood, but thou will’t need some weapon to make thee in some sort a match for them, in the welcome they will assuredly give thee.”
Charley Stewart slipped the skian dhu into his hoe, and went boldly but cautiously over the edge of the cliff. He was no sooner fairly swung in air than the hair rope stretched to a degree so alarming that Bessy MacDermot stood upon the giddy verge, gnawing her very fingers, from the horrible dread that possessed her, that she was to see it give way and divide. Peter sat astride against the root of the tree, carefully eyeing every inch of the line ere he allowed it to pass through his hands, and every now and then pausing—hesitating, and shaking his head most ominously, as certain portions of it, here and there, appeared to him to be of doubtful strength. Meanwhile, Charley felt himself gradually descending, and turning round and round at the end of the rope, by his own weight, his brave little heart beating, and his brain whirling, from the novelty and danger of his daring attempt—the screams of the young eagles sounding harshly in his ears, and growing louder and louder as he slowly neared them. By degrees he began distinctly to hear the faint cries of the child, and his courage and self-possession were restored to him, by the conviction that she was yet alive. In a few moments more he had the satisfaction to touch the ledge of rock with his toes, and he was at last enabled to relieve the rope from his weight, by planting himself upon its ample, but fearfully inclined surface. He shouted aloud, to make Peter aware that the line had so far done its duty, and then he cautiously approached the nest, where, to his great joy, he found the infant altogether uninjured, except by a cross cut upon her left cheek, which she seemed to have received from some accidental movement of the beak or talons of one of the two eaglets, between which she had been deposited by the old eagle. Had she not been placed between two so troublesome mates, and in a position so dangerous, nothing could have been more snug or easy than the bed in which the little Rosa was laid. The nest was about two yards square. It was built on the widest and most level part of the ledge, and it was composed of great sticks, covered with a thick layer of heather, over which rushes were laid to a considerable depth. Fortunately for the infant, the eaglets had been already full gorged ere she had been carried thither, and there yet lay beside them the greater part of the carcass of a lamb, and also a mountain hare, untouched, together with several moorfowl, and an immense quantity of bones and broken fragments of various animals.