the dawn of day, when the parent eagle would fly out, as it would be
necessary to shoot the old bird before they could think of gaining
possession of the young one. Rudy sat motionless, as if he had been part of
the stone on which he sat. He held his gun ready to fire, with his eyes fixed
steadily on the highest point of the cliff, where the eagle’s nest lay
concealed beneath the overhanging rock.
The three hunters had a long time to wait. At last they heard a rustling,
whirring sound above them, and a large hovering object darkened the air.
Two guns were ready to aim at the dark body of the eagle as it rose from the
nest. Then a shot was fired; for an instant the bird fluttered its wide-
spreading wings, and seemed as if it would fill up the whole of the chasm,
and drag down the hunters in its fall. But it was not so; the eagle sunk
gradually into the abyss beneath, and the branches of trees and bushes were
broken by its weight. Then the hunters roused themselves: three of the
longest ladders were brought and bound together; the topmost ring of these
ladders would just reach the edge of the rock which hung over the abyss,
but no farther. The point beneath which the eagle’s nest lay sheltered was
much higher, and the sides of the rock were as smooth as a wall. After
consulting together, they determined to bind together two more ladders, and
to hoist them over the cavity, and so form a communication with the three
beneath them, by binding the upper ones to the lower. With great difficulty
they contrived to drag the two ladders over the rock, and there they hung for
some moments, swaying over the abyss; but no sooner had they fastened
them together, than Rudy placed his foot on the lowest step.
It was a bitterly cold morning; clouds of mist were rising from beneath,
and Rudy stood on the lower step of the ladder as a fly rests on a piece of
swinging straw, which a bird may have dropped from the edge of the nest it
was building on some tall factory chimney; but the fly could fly away if the
straw were shaken, Rudy could only break his neck. The wind whistled
around him, and beneath him the waters of the abyss, swelled by the
thawing of the glaciers, those palaces of the Ice Maiden, foamed and roared
in their rapid course. When Rudy began to ascend, the ladder trembled like
