Chapter 5 THE NEST OF THE FISHING EAGLE.

Benjamin continued to attend the school, but it was evident that he did so with an injured heart, and chiefly out of love for the old chief, his father. He had a high regard for his teacher, whose kindness was unfailing, and he showed a certain partiality for Gretchen; but he was as a rule silent, and there were dark lines on his forehead that showed that he was unhappy. He would not be treated as an inferior, and he seemed to feel that he was so regarded by the scholars.

He began to show a peculiar kind of contempt for all of the pupils except Gretchen. He pretended not to see them, hear them, or to be aware of their presence or existence. He would pass through a group of boys as though the place was vacant, not so much as moving his eye from the direct path. He came and went, solitary and self-contained, proud, cold, and revengeful.

But this indifference was caused by sensitiveness and the feeling that he had been slighted. The dark lines relaxed, and his face wore a kindly glow whenever his teacher went to his desk-if the split-log bench for a book-rest might be so called. "I would give my life for Gretchen and you," he said one day to Mr. Mann; and added: "I would save them all for you."

There was a cluster of gigantic trees close by the school-house, nearly two hundred feet high. The trees, which were fir, had only dry stumps of limbs for a distance of nearly one hundred feet from the ground. At the top, or near the top, the green leaves or needles and dead boughs had matted together and formed a kind of shelf or eyrie, and on this a pair of fishing eagles had made their nest.

The nest had been there many years, and the eagles had come back to it during the breeding season and reared their young.

For a time after the opening of the school none of the pupils seemed to give any special attention to this high nest. It was a cheerful sight at noon to see the eagles wheel in the air, or the male eagle come from the glimmering hills and alight beside his mate.

One afternoon a sudden shadow like a falling cloud passed by the half-open shutter of the log school-house and caused the pupils to start. There was a sharp cry of distress in the air, and the master looked out and said:

"Attend to your books, children; it is only the eagle."

But again and again the same swift shadow, like the fragment of a storm-cloud, passed across the light, and the wild scream of the bird caused the scholars to watch and to listen. The cry was that of agony and affright, and it was so recognized by Benjamin, whose ear and eye were open to Nature, and who understood the voices and cries of the wild and winged inhabitants of the trees and air.

He raised his hand.

"May I go see?"

The master bowed silently. The boy glided out of the door, and was heard to exclaim:

"Look! look! the nest-the nest!"

The master granted the school a recess, and all in a few moments were standing without the door peering into the tall trees.

The long dry weather and withering sun had caused the dead boughs to shrink and to break beneath the great weight of the nest that rested upon them. The eagle's nest was in ruins. It had fallen upon the lower boughs, and two young half-fledged eaglets were to be seen hanging helplessly on a few sticks in mid-air and in danger of falling to the ground.

It was a bright afternoon. The distress of the two birds was pathetic, and their cries called about them other birds, as if in sympathy.

The eagles seldom descended to any point near the plain in their flight, but mounted, as it were, to the sun, or floated high in the air; but in their distress this afternoon they darted downward almost to the ground, as though appealing for help for their young.

While the school was watching this curious scene the old chief of the Umatillas came up the cool highway or trail, to go home with Benjamin after school.

The eagles seemed to know him. As he joined the pitying group, the female eagle descended as in a spasm of grief, and her wing swept his plume. She uttered a long, tremulous cry as she passed and ascended to her young.

"She call," said the old chief. "She call me."

"I go," said Benjamin, with a look at his father.

"Yes, go-she call. She call-the God overhead he call. Go!"

A slender young pine ran up beside one of the giant trees, tall and green. In a moment Benjamin was seen ascending this pine to a point where he could throw himself upon the smallest of the great trees and grasp the ladder of the lower dead branches. Up and up he went in the view of all, until he had reached a height of some hundred and fifty feet.

The eagles wheeled around him, describing higher circles as he ascended. He reached the young eagles at last, but passed by them. What was he going to do?

There was a shelf of green boughs above him, which would bear the weight of a nest. He went up to them at a distance of nearly two hundred feet. He then began to gather up the fallen sticks of the old nest, and to break off new sticks and to construct a new nest. The old chief watched him with pride, and, turning to the master, said:

"Ah-a-that is my boy. He be me. I was he once-it is gone now-what I was."

When Benjamin had made a nest he descended, and at the peril of his own life, on the decayed limbs, he rescued the two young eagles that were hanging with heads downward and open beaks. He carried them up to the new nest and placed them in it, and began to descend.

But a withered bough that he grasped was too slender for his weight, and broke. He grasped another, but that too gave way. He tried to drop into the top of the tall young pine below him, but, in his effort to get into position to do so, limb after limb of dead wood broke, and he came falling to the earth, amid the startled looks of the chief and the cries of the children.

The ground was soft, and his body lay for a time half imbedded in it.

He was senseless, and blood streamed from his nose and reddened his eyes. The old chief seized his arm and tried to raise him, but the effort brought no sign of life, and his body was lowered slowly back again by the agonized father, who sat down and dropped his head on his son's breast.

Mr. Mann brought water and wet the boy's lips and bathed his brow. He then placed his hand over the boy's heart and held it there. There was a long silence. The old chief watched the teacher's hand. He seemed waiting for a word of hope; but Mr. Mann did not speak.

The old chief lifted his head at last, and said; appealingly:

"Boston tilicum, you do not know how I feel! You do not know-the birds know-you do not know!"

The teacher rubbed the boy's breast and arms, and said:

"He will revive."

"What, Boston tilicum?"

"He will live."

"My boy?"

"Yes."

The dark face brightened. The old man clasped the boy's hand and drew it to his breast. The children attempted to brush the earth out of the young hero's dark, matted hair, but the old chief said, mysteriously:

"No touch him! he is mine."

At last a convulsive movement passed over the boy's body. The teacher again pressed his hand on the heart of his pupil, and he quickly exclaimed: "It beats."

The fiery sun gleamed from the snowy mountains. There were cool murmurs of winds in the trees, and they sent forth a resinous odor into the air. The balm dropped down like a messenger of healing.

Presently the boy's eyes opened and gazed steadily into the blue air.

The eagles were wheeling about the trees. The boy watched them, as though nothing had passed. They were making narrowing circles, and at last each alighted on the new nest beside their young.

He turned his face slowly toward his father.

"Saved!" he said. "They are happy. I fell. Let's go."

He rose up. As he did so the male eagle rose from his nest and, uttering a glad scream, wheeled in the sky and made his way through the crimson haze toward the fishing grounds of the lower Columbia.

The chief's eye followed him for a time; then the old man turned a happy face on the schoolmaster and children and said:

"I know how he feels-the Manitou overhead-he made the hearts of all; yours-the birds-mine. He is glad!"

There was something beautiful and pathetic in the old chief's sense of the common heart and feeling of all conscious beings. The very eagles seemed to understand it; and Master Mann, as he turned away from the school-house that day, said to Gretchen:

"I myself am being taught. I am glad to learn all this large life. I hope that you will one day become a teacher."

Gretchen went home that afternoon with a glad heart. Benjamin did not return to the school again for several days, and when he came back it seemed to be with a sense of humiliation. He seemed to feel somehow that he ought not to have fallen from the tree.

The fourth of July came, and Master Mann had invited the school to come together on the holiday for patriotic exercises. He had one of the pupils read the Declaration of Independence on the occasion, and Gretchen played the President's March on the violin. He himself made an historical address, and then joined in some games out of doors under the trees.

He brought to the school-house that day an American flag, which he hung over the desk during the exercises. When the school went out to play he said:

"I wish I could hang the flag from a pole, or from the top of one of the trees."

Benjamin's face brightened.

"I will go," he said; "I will go up."

"Hang it on the eagle's nest," said one of the pupils. "The eagle is the national bird."

Mr. Mann saw that to suspend the national emblem from the eagle's nest would be a patriotic episode of the day, and he gave the flag to Benjamin, saying:

"Beware of the rotten limbs."

"I no woman," said Benjamin; and, waving the flag, he moved like a squirrel up the trees. He placed the flag on the nest, while the eagles wheeled around him, screaming wildly. He descended safely, and made the incident an object lesson, as Mr. Mann repeated the ode to the American eagle, found at that time in many reading-books.

While Mr. Mann was doing so, and had reached the line-

"Bird of Columbia, well art thou," etc.,

one of the eagles swept down to the nest and seized the banner in his talons. He rose again into the air and circled high, then with a swift, strong curve of the wings, came down to the nest again, and, seizing the flag, tore it from the nest and bore it aloft to the sky.

The eagle soared away in the blue heavens, and the flag streamed after him in his talons.

It was a beautiful sight. The air was clear, the far peaks were serene, and the glaciers of Mount Hood gleamed like a glory of crystallized light. The children cheered. The bird soared away in the blue heavens, and the flag streamed after him in his talons. He dropped the flag at last over a dark, green forest. The children cheered again.

It was miles away.

"I go find it," said Benjamin; and he darted away from the place and was not seen until the next day, when he returned, bringing the flag with him.

Marlowe Mann never forgot that fourth of July on the Columbia.

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