Legendary Tales of the Highlands (Volume 2 of 3) / A sequel to Highland Rambles

by Sir Thomas Dick Lauder

Charley Stewart did not consume much time in his examination of the nest. Being at once satisfied that it would be worse than hazardous to trust the hair-line with the weight of the child, in addition to his own, he undid it from his body. Approaching the nest, he gently lifted the crying infant from between its two screeching and somewhat pugnacious companions. The moment he had done so, the little innocent became quiet, and instantly recognising him, she held out her hands, and smiled and chuckled to him, at once oblivious of all her miseries. Charley kissed his little favourite over and over again, and then he proceeded to tie the rope carefully around and across her, so as to guard against all possibility of its slipping. Having accomplished this, he shouted to Peter to pull away—kissed the little Rosa once more, and then committed her to the vacant air. Nothing could equal the anxiety he endured whilst he beheld her slowly rising upwards. And when he beheld the mother’s hands appear over the edge of the rock, and snatch her from his sight, nothing could match the shout of delight which he gave. The maternal screams of joy which followed, and which came faintly down to his ears, were to him a full reward for all the terrors of his desperate enterprise. For that instant he forgot the perilous situation in which he then stood, and the risk that he had yet to run ere he could hope to be extricated from it.

But a few moments only elapsed ere all thoughts of any thing else but his own self preservation were banished from his mind. The angry screams of the two old eagles came fearfully through the air, and he beheld them approaching the rock, cleaving the air with furious flight. He cast one look upwards, and saw the rope rapidly descending to him—but the eagles were coming still faster, and he had only time to wrench out a large stick from the nest, to aid him in defending himself, when they were both upon him. He had nothing for it but to crouch as close in under the angle of the rock as he could, and there he planted himself, with the stick in his right hand, and the skian dhu in his left, resolved to make the best fight he could of it. They commenced their attack on him whilst still on the wing, by flying at him, and striking fiercely at him with their talons, each returning alternately to the assault after making a narrow circuit in the air. Whilst thus engaged, Charley neither lost courage nor presence of mind, but contrived to deal to each of them a severe blow now and then with the rugged stick, as they came at him in succession. Finding that they could make no impression upon him in this way, sheltered as he was by his position under the projecting rock, they seemed at once to resolve, as if by mutual consent, to adopt a more resolute mode of attack.

Alighting on the ledge of rock at the same moment, one on each side of the place where he was crouching, both the eagles now assailed him at once with inconceivable ferocity. Half fronting that one which was to his right, he laid a severe blow on it, which somewhat staggered it in its onset. But whilst he was thus occupied with it, the other, which was to his left, tore open his cheek, with a blow of his talons, that had nearly stunned him. More from mechanical impulse, than from any actual design, he struck a back-handed blow with his skian dhu. Fortunately for him it proved most effectual, for it penetrated the eagle to the very heart, laid it fluttering on its back, and, in the violence of its struggles, it rolled over the inclined ledge, and fell dead to the bottom of the crag. But poor Charley had no leisure to rejoice over this piece of success. He looked anxiously to the hair-line, which hung dangling within reach of his grasp; but, ere he could seize it, his other enemy was at him again. As if it had profited by the severe lessons it had gotten, the strokes of this second eagle were given with so much rapidity and caution, that close as Charley Stewart was obliged to keep into the angle of the rock, and stupified as he was, in some degree, by the wound he had received, he was able to do little more than to defend his own person from injury, whilst he was obliged slowly to give ground before his feathered assailant. Whilst retreating and fighting in this manner, one blow of his stick, better directed than the rest, struck the eagle on the side of the skull, close to its juncture with the neck, and it went fluttering down over the rock, in the pangs of death, after its fellow. But alas! poor Charley Stewart’s victory cost him dear.

The two listeners above, who had seen the approach of the eagles, were dreadfully alarmed by the noise of the terrific conflict that was going on upon the ledge below. In vain did they shout to terrify the birds. In vain did old Peter frequently try the hair-line, by pulling gently at it, in the hope of finding that the weight of Charley’s body was attached to it. They were tortured by anxious uncertainty regarding him, until a piercing shriek came upwards from him, and all was quiet. Winged by terror, Bessy MacDermot rushed, with her child in her arms, down the winding path, to a point whence she could command a view of the ledge. The boy was no longer there!—She rubbed her dimmed eyes, gave one more intent gaze. From the very nature of the place, it was impossible that he could be there unseen by her, from the point she now occupied, and she was thus too certainly assured that he was gone. Uttering a despairing scream, she flew franticly down to look for him among the trees at the bottom of the cliff. There she sought all along the base of it, dreading every moment to have her eyes shocked with the sight of his mangled remains, and uttering the most doleful lamentations that she had murdered her dear friend’s gallant boy. She found both the dead eagles indeed, but she could see nothing of Charley Stewart. Old Peter then came hobbling after her, to join her in her search, and both of them went over the ground again and again in vain. A faint hope began at length to arise in the minds of both, that he might, after all, be still on the ledge above, though, perhaps, lying wounded, or in a swoon; and, although both felt it to be almost against all reason to indulge in it, they instantly prepared to return, to endeavour more perfectly to ascertain the fact; and, if it could be done no otherwise, Bessy MacDermot resolved to run and rouse the country, in order to procure strong ropes, and men to go down to examine the ledge itself.

Full of these intentions, they were in the act of quitting the bottom of the cliff, when a faint voice arrested their steps. They stopped to listen, and, after a little time, they were aware that it came down from over their heads. They looked up, but, seeing nothing, they became more than ever convinced, that it was Charley’s voice calling to them from the ledge, and they again turned to hurry away to assure him of help. But the voice came again, and so much stronger, as to satisfy them that the speaker could be at no very great distance from them.

“Peter!—Bessy!—I am here in the tree,” said Charley Stewart, “for the love of Saint Michael, stop and take me down!”

Some minutes elapsed before they could catch a glimpse of the poor boy. At length they discovered him, half way up a tall pine tree, hanging by his little coat to the knag of a broken branch. I may as well tell you at once how he came there. Whilst he was in the very act of dealing that last well directed blow of the stick, that proved so fatal to the second eagle, his foot slipped on the narrower and more inclined part of the ledge, to which he had been gradually driven back during the combat, and uttering that despairing scream which rang like his knell in the affrighted ears of Bessy MacDermot, and Peter, he fell through the air, and crashed down among the dense foliage of the pine-tops below. One of his legs was broken across a bough, which it met with in his descent through the tree, but his head, and all his other vital parts, had luckily escaped injury; and the knag, which so fortunately caught his clothes, and kept him suspended, had been the providential means of saving him from that death, which he must have otherwise inevitably met with on coming to the ground.

But how were they to get poor Charley down from the tree? Old Peter could not climb it; but, seeing that it was furnished with branches nearly to its root, Bessy MacDermot gave her child into the hands of the old man, and, taking a double end of the hair-line with her, she clambered up the stem to the place where the boy was hanging. Tenderly relieving him from his distressing position, she quickly passed two or three double folds of the rope around him, and then lowered him gently down to Peter. So patient had Charley been under his sufferings, excruciating as they were, that it was not until they were about to move him from the ground, that they discovered the injury that his limb had received.

“Oh, what shall I do?” cried Bessy MacDermot, wringing her hands; “Oh, how can I face Alice Asher, after thus causing so sad a mischance to her darling, her beautiful boy?”

“Tut, Bessy, never mind me!” said Charley faintly, but with a gentle smile, that sorted but ill with his wounded and bloody countenance; “I shall soon get the better of all this; but if it had been twice as bad with me, Bessy, nay, if I had been killed outright, I should have well deserved it, for quitting my poor little Rosa there, as I did upon the harvest rig.”